THE GUNFIGHTER is a story about a tired man who is sick of his reputation as a gunfighter. Again and again, punks and the very curious come to test his abilities and he just wants to be left alone because he's gotten sick of all the death.

Aside from The Big Country (also by Peck),this is perhaps the greatest Western I have ever seen. I think I even like it more than High Noon and it's a little better than Peck's Yellow Sky.

So why do I like this movie so much? Well, like The Big Country, this movie deliberately defies the clichés that ruin many Westerns. Instead of the glamorous Western gunfighter (so popular in movies though rarely seen in the real West),Peck is a man who is sick of the reputation he's created for himself. Yes, he's shot many men but overall he's found his life to be very hollow and pointless as he ages. This disgust with his reputation is obvious when he is confronted again and again by the obnoxious young Richard Jaekel--who repeatedly challenges him to a gun fight. He does everything he can to avoid killing this idiot, but Jaekel and so many of his victims begged to be killed in a stupid quest for machismo! This is not to say that I hate every traditional Western. There are some John Wayne flicks, for example, that I enjoy (particularly Hondo). It's just that a steady diet of 1-demensional hollywoodized Westerns leaves me bored and unfulfilled. Pecks' 3 Westerns mentioned above along with his exceptional film The Bravados prove to me that he was the finest Western star of all-time. Yes, he was not so famous for Westerns, but considering that MOST every Western he made became a classic, it is a track record no one can match (not John Wayne and not even Jimmy Stewart).

Although Henry King is primarily known in sound films for his association with Tyrone Power, they did nine films together, King and Gregory Peck did six films and they include some of the best for both. The Gunfighter is the second of six collaborations and some might argue it's one of the best.

Including Gregory Peck himself. In the seventies I happen to know where Gregory Peck was going to be and waylaid him for an autograph. He was very gracious with the four or five of us that were there. He autographed my copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, but I happen to mention that I liked The Gunfighter very much, having just seen it several weeks earlier. I remember he replied that he liked The Gunfighter also and that it was a special favorite of his.

The Gunfighter in fact has some of the same themes the earlier Henry King western classic, Jesse James does. In the very end Tyrone Power as Jesse is as tired and world weary of the outlaw life as Peck's Jimmy Ringo is. Unlike in Jesse, we first meet Jimmy as the veteran gunfighter, constantly on the move.

After killing a young punk in Santa Fe, Peck heads out for the town of Cayenne where his long estranged wife is with their son. They're living under an assumed name and she's never told the boy about Peck. He's also got three brothers of the dead man on his trail and runs into a whole lot of his past in that trip to Cayenne.

Thirty years after meeting Gregory Peck and telling him how much I enjoyed his work in that film, my enthusiasm for The Gunfighter hasn't slackened off one bit. It's definitely one of the top three or four films of his for me.

Other performances to enjoy in this film are Millard Mitchell as the marshal of Cayenne and Skip Homeier and Richard Jaeckel as a pair of young punks. In fact the best scene in the film doesn't involve Peck at all, it's a confrontation between Mitchell and Homeier and you won't forget it when you see it.

Henry King, though not known primarily as a director of westerns, did one of the very best in The Gunfighter. Even if you're not a western fan, don't miss this one.

THE GUNFIGHTER is a mature and reflective western that manages to subvert genre expectations within the action context and trappings of its own genre. It stars the inimitable Gregory Peck as Jimmy Ringo, a world-weary gunslinger whose biggest enemy is not one of the many villains after him but rather his own reputation. As such this is a film which explores the dark side of heroism and it feels very real and very gritty as a result.

The film itself is quite low budget, shot in black and white and with a great deal of the running time taking place within a single bar-room location. Nonetheless suspense is inherent in the premise and in some ways I was reminded of DOG DAY AFTERNOON as the situation becomes a kind of insane circus. Peck is excellent, it does go without saying really, and well supported by the likes of Karl Malden. Those looking for crowd-pleasing action sequences should look elsewhere as this is all about consequence and real-life, not gung-ho fantasy. The ending is unexpected, but very good.