The Shooting (1966)

Best movie ever!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

This is a surprising movie based on when it was released. It demonstrates how much influence Leone had, but this one reverses the trend. Instead of deconstructing the classic Hollywood western and re- tasking it as with the Italian system, this indie take on the genre kicks the can even further down the road.This is art more than a commercial venture, and, accordingly, the consumer mindset addled viewer that wants to be spoon fed pap will recoil in horror that this movie requires them to work almost as hard as the cast. If you're the kind of person that says, "Keep it simple stupid", or gets exasperated with semantic arguments thinking they are pointless, you will not like this movie. It makes you think. It doesn't give you an ending even, if you don't. The "Hey, cut the crap, just tell me how to get what I want" crowd will throw their hands up in horror. Reactions to this one would be a really good test of just how much of a mindless consumer one has become. In our society it is not surprising that there are some really negative reactions to this one. They're the same people that think you're less than a human being- literally- if you don't support the local NFL franchise religiously. That said, if you're not like that and you like Spaghetti genre westerns, this isn't the best, but it is a must see, imho. I have no guess as to why some moan about the cast. They were all perfectly cast. Without giving out spoilers, I have to disagree that there is a surprise ending. It's more that it's a surprise how the ending is crafted, not the actual outcome. But that's the point of a 1965-66 style western deconstruction. It's far more considered than many that were doing that over the following five years. Don't believe the gripe. It's coming from conceptually lazy people. This one is an effort, but well worth it.Food pairing: Venison Chile Cheese Dogs with Shiner Bock

Monte Hellman directed this strikingly unique, original, yet experimental western that stars Millie Perkins as a mysterious woman with no revealed name who hires two cowboys named Willit & Coley(played by Warren Oates & Will Hutchins) to track down a man for mysterious reasons, though it appears to be Willit's brother who may have been involved in an accidental death with another cowboy who is later shot dead. Jack Nicholson costars as a cold-blooded gunfighter assisting the woman in the hunt, which leads them to the barren hot desert and a surprise ending, which will no doubt either intrigue or infuriate the viewer, but fine acting and direction keep it on track, especially by Perkins.

After 10 minutes of that forced march across a lunar landscape, I popped a six-pack, hoping it would be enough. It wasn't. One thing for sure, producer Corman and company got their meager money's worth. After all, how many other $1.50 movies provoke this kind of reviewer discussion 50-years later.Now, I'm not going to recap the storyline (what there is of it) nor dwell on its details. Others have done that much better than I can. What I want to offer is a point of view that I think shapes much of the movie, and can be used to maybe understand better its maddeningly elliptical nature.So which is the movie—profound, pretentious, maddening, boring, or maybe just plain puzzling. At the risk of seeming a mush brain, I think it's all of these. But I'm most in sympathy with those folks who paid to see a conventional western and got this elliptical trip through heck instead. One thing for sure, the dialogue only ate up about a nickel's worth of the total expense. But if the crew was so cramped for funds, I'm wondering how come they went on expensive location. Usually, these cheapo's would film guys riding around LA's scrublands and then into a studio cow town, and then be forgotten. Not so, here. Instead, it's a blinding tour of Utah's purgatory part. A perfect setting for what may or may not be a story.Be sure to catch the first 15-minutes, because that's where most of the plot questions are dealt with to the extent that they are dealt with at all. The trouble is these hints at answers come before the questions, which causes confusion if you haven't paid close attention. And I should thank those reviewers who took time to clarify many of the more puzzling parts that slipped past me. Anyway, don't expect many answers from the long ride part, which is just that, a long ride and a lot of dead horses—a good, if unpleasant, touch given the heat and exposure.Clearly, director Hellman and writer Easton have seen a batch of New Wave French movies. The influence here is clear. Theme predominates over story. I suspect that's why so many folks object to the film. Hollywood and commercial movies traditionally emphasized storyline above all, and if themes emerged, that was a bonus. Then too, conventional filmmaking didn't like to leave viewers with loose ends. Outstanding questions got wrapped up in the end, so the audience left unprovoked, with an optimistic view that things always turn out right in the end.Now, I take the theme here—if there is one—to be an existential one of a particularly French variety. Anyway, if I recall my philosophy class correctly, existentialism means that existence precedes essence, or, at the risk of oversimplifying—sheer existence is basic-- all else like truth or personal identities are concocted afterwards. Now, in the movie, we're confronted with characters whose identities remain puzzling, especially the woman, Billie and the bearded man. Plus we know very little about Coley or Willett. Instead, we're simply confronted with their raw existence, in much the same way as Coley and Willett are confronted by the raw existence of the woman, Billie, and the bearded man. The fact that so little of the personal is explained means that interaction occurs between people who simply exist rather than people who are known to us.What makes this generic brand of existentialism slant in a particularly French direction are two things. Among other points, the French philosopher J-P Sartre makes two pithy claims, namely that 'Hell is other people' and that 'life is absurd'. Clearly these two themes are not exactly game winners for commercial filmmakers. As to the former, however, given the constant badgering between the characters as they move through the hellish terrain, the first claim is at least suggested by the dour screenplay. Except for Willett's kindly gesture toward the dead Coley, there's precious little kindness among the travelers. And for the generally inoffensive Coley, hell really is other people.As to Sartre's second claim, that life is meaningless, that's of course suggested by the ultra- bleak ending, as Billie staggers hopelessly down what can be taken as a brutal road of life to no apparent meaningful end. Ditto the others who perish in a similar lack of glory, and we wonder what's it all for. If this sounds pretty bleak, so is a movie that I can't imagine playing in a downtown theatre of the time.Naturally, viewers don't have to take such claims as true of the real world in order to take the film as reflecting these philosophical points of view. Anyhow, I did find the movie interesting enough to think of it as shaped by these rather esoteric terms. Nonetheless, I certainly don't blame folks for reacting negatively to what I take as an exceptionally non-western western, and maybe even anti-movie movie. Meanwhile, I've got some empty six-packs to discard.

After reading many reviews of this western, I want to go on record as saying I thought it was one of the biggest wastes of my time I've ever spent viewing a movie.I like the kind of show where you spend the early part of the film wondering how this and that will tie together, and why so-and-so did what they did. In this film, I was paying close attention wanting to get those answers. But it just went on and on, going through the dessert, nobody revealing anything interesting about any of the characters. Both my wife and I were about to the point of just stopping the DVD (part of a set of Westerns bought at our local supermarket, costing about $1.30 per movie. At least we didn't waste much money on it.) and not bothering to see how it ends, but we decided to go another five minutes, and, thankfully, it ended.None of the characters were interesting in any way, thus it was impossible to really care what happened to them. Coley and Willett were the closest to being the "heroes" but we never had a reason to warm up to them. We knew the woman was bad from the time she shot her horse for no reason. Thus, no interest at all in whether she forms any sort of romance with anyone.We are presented all sorts of questions about everyone's actions in this film and given answers for only a small percentage of those questions.When you think of all the reasons why you might like some character study in a Western, none of them exist here. We just go on and on across the dessert, endlessly. Maybe we weren't helped by watching this on a hot summer afternoon, where the dessert heat seemed even hotter than it would otherwise.For the folks who saw all sorts of meaning (did someone really claim a connection with the Kennedy Assassination? Wow!) I say, more power to you. If you liked it, great! I just wish I could get my $1.30 back. When I'm in the home nearing 100, and the nurse puts this into my DVD to let me watch it, I'll know it's time for me to go.