The Gunfighter

1950 Directed by Henry King

His only friend was his gun... His only refuge - a woman's heart!

The fastest gun in the West tries to escape his reputation.

Gregory Peck Helen Westcott Millard Mitchell Jean Parker Karl Malden Skip Homeier Anthony Ross Verna Felton Ellen Corby Richard Jaeckel Victor Adamson Murray Alper C.E. Anderson Carl Andre Beulah Archuletta Gregg Barton Chet Brandenburg Peter Brocco Larry Buchanan Harry Carter Cliff Clark Angela Clarke David Clarke Edmund Cobb Heinie Conklin Dick Curtis Donald Duran Eddie Ehrhart John George Show All…

Alternative Titles

Der Scharfschütze, Стрелецът, Fiebre de sangre, Scharfschütze Jimmy Ringo, Farligt rygte, El pistolero, Ase kädessä, La cible humaine, Monomahia tin avgi, A pisztolyhős, Romantico avventuriero, Geschonden glorie, Pistolarul, Hämndens timme

western

85 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Snakes$s 🐍

One of the westerns that works the most psychologically, simple, restrained, but full of tension. The script makes the movie advance with an incredible pace, where each threat gets closer and closer to the protagonist. Besides the dialogues. And Gregory Peck looks great as the veteran gunslinger and distressed with his fame from Quickest trigger in the west.
Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★ 4

"Well the trouble so far ain't been him demoralizing the town, it's the town demoralizing him. Some fella I hear just tried to demoralize him with a Winchester."
One of the greatest western texts on honor and masculinity and how perception and reputation and mythology all misrepresent reality.
Gregory Peck is The Gunfighter, the fastest gun in the West—but he doesn't want to be that anymore, and it becomes increasingly unclear that it was never a goal of his to begin with. But nevertheless, everywhere he goes he finds young, upstart little pipsqueaks who want to prove their worth by challenging him to a shootout. So when an arrogant kid draws on him in a saloon, Peck kills him in…
Review by Steve G 🐝 ★★★★½ 10

You Have 90 Minutes To Comply: The New Year Project
According to my tags, the last time I watched a western (not including the recent Back To The Future Part III) was all the way back in July with Yellow Sky.
Well that's just too long, isn't it? I guess certain projects have contributed to that quite significantly but as someone who loves westerns and grew up on them to a certain extent, that's a streak I certainly don't want to repeat. I might have to make my next project a western one, I think. The thing is that although I did enjoy a lot of the films that I watched during my October horror classics project, I'm generally reluctant…
Review by eely 🌙 ★★★½ 1

gregory peck: whips out his gun and shoots a man
me: alexa play “my heart belongs to daddy” by marilyn monroe
Review by Sandy 16

This one took me by surprise. I was in the kitchen mending (because that's where the light was and the others wanted the t.v. room to be dark for the show), thinking the movie would be about, well, gun fighting. Plus, I reckoned there would be a fair amount of chasing and showdowns, but I soon found out that it was all quiet conversation--parlor talk, with a little of the other stuff in the periphery. I finished the mending and then later restarted the film, so I could join in with those conversations, up close and personal. There is talk of regret and redemption, of preconceived notions and ramifications, and there is even a little Atticusesque pragmatic parenting PDQ, thrown in for good measure. The Gunfighter's scenes remind me a little of the talking in Rio Bravo, but instead of shooting the breeze, here it is philosophizing, cowboy style.
I really enjoyed this.
Review by Daniel88 ★★★

Apparantly, John Wayne was lobbying intensively to play the title role in The Gunfighter. Unfortunately, he didn't get the part as I think he would have been perfect to play such a role at this stage of his career, especially after having played aging characters in Red River (1948) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949). Luckily for us he got to play in his own 'The Gunfighter' in what was to be his goodbye movie The Shootist (1976).
Gregory Peck, however, does not disappoint in a role you would not normally associate with his usual on screen persona. It is just that I am not inclined to rank The Gunfighter as one of the great western classics. Even though I really like that it deals with themes that are in many ways ahead of their time and would reoccur in the later revisionist westerns.

Recent reviews

Review by Joseph Pitard ★★★

I felt the tension throughout like something was going to blow me away but I waited annnnnnnnmmnd waited.
Review by Zoltán Szele ★★★

Hosszú felvezetés egy villámgyors fináléval...
Review by Jesper Lundstedt ★★★

Undrar om Gregory Peck var en lika härlig pappa i verkligheten som i alla filmer jag sett honom.
The Gunfighter är väl en bra film, antar jag. Den har om inte annat vett nog att inte ens vara en och en halv timme, så den ganska tunna handlingen hinner aldrig börja kännas problematiskt lång. Samtidigt känner jag lite att den mest bara pågår utan att jag någonsin bryr mig jättemycket om vad som pågår. Tänkte mest på att Gregory Peck, utöver att vara en pappa på film, i den där mustaschen såg väldigt mycket ut som Jude Law med mindre sorgset hår.
Review by PaulFOW ★★★★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Ein Film über einen Helden, der das Heldsein voll und ganz leid ist. Das passt so was von gut in unsere heutige Zeit... mir fällt allerdings kein Superheld ein, der von ganzem Herzen kein Held mehr sein möchte. Do entwickelt dieser Film eine Kraft, und man meint, alles werde gut, und dann wendet sich die Handlung. Obwohl der „Held“ stirbt und der Böse weiterlebt, bekommt dieser doch seine gerechte Strafe.
Review by Andy Fell ★★½ 2

Western mit "Captain Ahab" Gregory Pecj als alternder Revolverheld Jimmy Ringo.
Ringo ist das ständige "AufderFluchtsein" leid und möchte sich endlich "zur Ruhe setzen", am besten mit seiner alten Liebe Peggy und dem gemeinsamen Sohn. Aber erstens will Peggy nichts mehr von ihm wissen und zweitens wird er ständig von irgendwelchen Halbstarken herausgefordert.
Gregory Peck spielt den Gunfighter überzeugend, trotzdem ist der Western über weite Strecke fad. So'ne richtig Westernstimmung will da nicht aufkommen.
Review by Dhario DeSousa ★★★★

Deceivingly simple premise with a complex, thoughtful plot (even though the romance is fairly bland).
Review by Guido Anselmi

Henry King inszeniert einen brillanten Western, welcher den Mythos des glorreichen Revolverheldens geschickt und in bemerkenswerter Stringenz dekonstruiert und Gregory Pecks Jimmy Ringo als geläuterten, traurigen, von seiner Familie zwangsweise getrennten Mann darstellt, dem Fehler und Leichtsinn seiner Vergangenheit zu dauerhaft-schädlichem Ruf gereichten und ein friedvolles Leben auf ewiglich unmöglich machten. In Anlehnung an die Hobbsche Gerechtigkeitstheorie und wie im Western-Genre üblich finden wir hier einen Schwebezustand zwischen dem vorstaatlichen menschlichen Naturzustand und Anfängen einer modernen Zivilisation. Wie Ringo allerdings im Film zu erwähnen pflegt, ist der Mensch noch immer des Menschen Wolf, während rechtsstaatliche Institutionen sowie Gewaltenteilung noch keine Mittel sind, um dem Protagonisten ein angemessenes Leben frei von Todesangst zu ermöglichen.
Review by James💫 ★★★½ 4

I haven’t seen that many westerns, so I’m glad I got this recommended to me for Secret Cinema. This film shows the consequences of being a famous gunman and why it isn’t worth it. Gregory Peck had an amazing performance in this. The pacing was great and I was never really bored, even though most of the film was shot in a bar. Overall, I really liked The Gunfighter so I’ll definitely be looking into more westerns in the future.
Review by Goran Lowie ★★★

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