The Gunfighter

DVD review from The Movie Snob

The Gunfighter (B). According to Entertainment Weekly, this is a classic Western (1950) only recently released on DVD, so I thought I'd give it a try. It's a pretty good little movie. Gregory Peck (To Kill a Mockingbird) stars as Jimmy Ringo, a famous outlaw and gunslinger who, at 35, has grown tired of his life of notoriety. He seeks out his long-estranged wife in the frontier town of Cayenne, but he finds he cannot easily leave the past behind. Hot-headed young guns want to test their mettle against him, and others seek revenge against him for past crimes, real or imagined. Having grown up knowing Gregory Peck only from his portrayal of Atticus Finch, I doubted his ability to play a fast-draw cowboy, but he turns in a surprisingly believable performance. And at 85 minutes, the film doesn't dawdle much. I also liked the short featurette "The Western Grows Up."