After 10 minutes of that forced march across a lunar landscape, I popped a six-pack, hoping it would be enough. It wasn't.
The 1960s had a lot of really bad Westerns that tried to bring existentialism to the West, and usually failed. Before Jack Nicholson became famous in Easy Rider, he did a lot of TV guest appearances and many horrible low budget movies.
This film begins with a cowboy by the name of "Willett 'Willie' Gashade" (Warren Oates) riding into a mining area he and three other men have set up only to find it somewhat deserted. Suddenly, gunshots ring out and he is forced to take cover.
"The Shooting" is an offbeat 1966 Western directed by Monte Hellman and written by Carole Eastman (using the pseudonym "Adrien Joyce"). The story involves two men (Warren Oates and Will Hutchins) who are hired by a mysterious woman (Millie Perkins) to accompany her to a town located many miles across the Utah desert.
The main reason to see this is for the early Nicholson role, but the movie itself is one of those slow moving and pretentious westerns where nothing much happens. Then there's the ending...
I guess if you want to talk yourself into believing this movie makes some sense you could do so. There are some well presented reviews here that make a pretty good case for it, but if it takes twisting yourself into a pretzel to make all the pieces fit, why wouldn't it be just as good an idea to have a story with a beginning, middle and an end?
As far as westerns go, the 60's were all about Italy and the spaghetti western. By 1967 the ripples Leone's movies are about to make in the American film-making business are around the corner, which leaves The Shooting hanging in a peculiar time and place.
... I have ever seen with performances by everyone that I wonder how they resurrected their careers.
As in Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece of nine years earlier, here we have an Everyman who is stalked by Death.It comes in the form of a haughty and capricious unnamed woman (Millie Perkins) who calls the shots and answers no questions.
