DKosty123
When I started watching this one, the beginning seemed very much like the typical Western of the 19050's. It was in a bar and some young punk decided he wanted to take on Ringo, the man reputed to have the fastest gun. He takes him on, and he loses. Then Ringo has to take it on the run as 3 brothers wanted to avenge the death of their youngest, even though he had created his own demise. That is where this movie changes. Ringo (Gregory Peck) has a place to go and a purpose to go there. He sets the 3 brothers after him on foot and heads for that place. It is a town, where his wife and son live, only he does not know where in town they are, or their names. Peck is absolutely brilliant as Ringo, and his character raises this way above the usual Western. Ringo is a character who wants to escape his reputation, but he can't. It seems he has a lot of help with a top notch support cast. Millard Mitchell is great as his friend, the Sheriff of the town Ringo's wife live in. He does everything he can do to protect Ringo but urgently try to get him to leave his town.Karl Malden is brilliant as the saloon keeper who gives him shelter and food and tries to help him leave too. Henry King who directs this had recently finished 12 O'Clock High which was also great with Peck. This next movie may not be as famous as the former, but it is every bit as good. Helen Westcott is Ringo's wife, though her role becomes more profound in the later part of this one. For anyone who likes Peck, this is above the average western, way above. The ending is a bit predictable, yet it is done so well and with a couple of extra twists, that the viewer is totally pulled into the story long before it ends.
weezeralfalfa
The basic message that being a celebrity gunfighter makes you the target of every young gunfighter who wants to make a name for themself, and the object of bothersome curiosity seekers is stated several times in the early going then, in case your short term memory is deficient, stated again as Gregory Peck(Jimmy Ringo)lays dying. I couldn't wait for the film to end, it was so boring, with minimal gunplay or humor. Mostly, Peck waited around in the saloon for his estranged wife to show up to talk to and to see his boy. I will say the climax wasn't what I expected. Helen Westcott played Ringo's schoolteacher wife: not a very pleasant woman from what I could tell... The name Jimmy Ringo is derived from the real life gunslinger Johnny Ringo: an enemy of Wyatt Earp in Tombstone.See it, if you dare, on You Tube or DVD. For me, the much less celebrated "Shoot Out", also starring Peck, was a much more worthwhile experience.
John Brooks
This here is just a great Western. We're given a hard-hitting start, the acting is top notch throughout, we're given strong plot that is well carried out by a host of various characters each with their own motivation and contribution to the story, good morals, and enough action coupled with dialog all in a poignant atmosphere... just really top notch Western stuff.Gregory Peck does surprisingly well as the tough guy protagonist although a young buck.The love story doesn't overflood the film and yet it is absolutely central.8/10.
oldblackandwhite
The Gunfighter is surely one of the great classic Westerns of the late 1940's/early 1950's era. Yours truly saw it in 1950, when it was new, with my family in the local small-town theater. It made as powerful impression then as is possible on a 6-year old kid, and it gets better and better with subsequent viewings for the fading old geezer.Tautly and skillfully directed by old studio veteran Henry King, and filmed in stark black and white, this hour and twenty-five minute picture moves along at a brisk pace with nary a wasted scene, all along building suspense while painting intense character studies. Gregory Peck, as the title's badman, and Millard Mitchell as his lawman friend, both turn in overpowering performances, with fine support coming from Jean Parker, Karl Malden, Helen Westcott, and Skip Homeier. The Gunfighter is tough, tense, poignant, gritty, authentic, dramatically engaging, and first rate in every way. The story by William Bowers and William Sellers drew an Acedmy Award nomination. The movie was well received by critics but not by the paying public for some reason. Yet it is now widely, and deservedly recognized as an all-time classic Western.That being said and without detracting from its formidable merits, The Gunfighter was hardly the first "adult" or "mature" Western, as pundits on this forum and elsewhere keep saying. To think so, you must practically ignore most of the "A" Western pictures produced in the 1940's. Does Red River (1948) with its tough, brutal, overbearing antihero and its grand epic story seem to you to have been made for children? No, and neither were any of the "A" Westerns of the same era. "Adult" can't mean sexual situations here, because there was no hanky-panky in The Gunfighter. But there was a plenty in Duel In The Sun (1946), Peck's first Western and a text book example of the way Old Hollywood movie makers knew how to steam your eye glasses without really showing much! And if show and tell is required, get a load of Marlene Dietrich's outfit in the opening scene of The Spoilers (1942). Some very immature types think "mature" means displaying a nihilistic attitude. If that's you, check out Lust For Gold (1949 -- see my review). You can wallow in its angst and love it! But that wasn't the attitude The Gunfighter had anyway. If "mature" requires a dark, brooding, doom-laden, noir-type story, take a gander at early Robert Mitchum opus Pursued (1947), or Ramrod (1947). Are we talking a concentration on character development, adult, even sexual situations, complex dramatic development, try Canyon Passage (1946), Whispering Smith (1948 -- see my review), or The Sea Of Grass (1947 -- see my review). Below is a partial list of others embodying more or less the same "mature", "adult" approaches to the Western genre.Yellow Sky (1948), Abilene Town (1947), Station West (1948), Honky Tonk (1941), Silver River (1948), Barbary Coast (1935), Cimarron (1931), Dakota (1945 -- see my review), San Antonio (1945 -- see my review), California (1946 -- see my review), My Darling Clementine (1946), Flame Of Barbary Coast (1945), Blood On The Moon (1948), Colorado Territory (1948), and of course Stagecoach (1939). And many others.The Gunfighter was following an established tradition, not setting a new one. But it is a fine example. A true classic from the waning days of Old Hollywood's Golden Era! In a few years, they wouldn't be able to make 'em like this one any more.
