I’ve never been a huge fan of John Wayne. It always seemed to me he played the same character in every movie he was in. And yet, all the same, there’s no denying he was a symbol of an era

In The Shootist, he plays J.B. Books, an aging gunfighter who rides into Carson City, Nevada to see an old friend, a Dr. Hostetler, to get a second opinion on what another medical man has told him.

Hostetler confirms the bad news: Books has an inoperable cancer. There’s nothing the doctor can do except prescribe laudanum, and give Books a reference to a boarding house down the road, operated by a widow named Bond Rogers and her son, Gillom.

Books takes a room, hoping only to die in peace, but word of the famous gunman soon spreads around town, and everyone, from the sheriff to the local newspaperman, is looking to make hay off of the dying celebrity.

Meanwhile, Books finds himself in a tumultuous relationship with Mrs. Rogers. There is immediate chemistry between them, but Books’s rough, gruff personality clashes with her prim religiosity. Gillom, for his part, is delighted to have Books staying in their house, but starts to resent him when he sees the stress it puts on his mother.

After a few days, Books realizes he isn’t going to be allowed to die peacefully, despite what Doc Hostetler recommends.  Various low-lifes keep trying to make names for themselves by ambushing Books, and a number of local criminals express their interest in becoming “The Man to Kill J.B. Books” in no uncertain terms. And so, Books realizes that in the end, his best bet at finding dignity is to die as he lived.

What makes the movie particularly noteworthy is twofold: first of all are how many quiet, understated scenes there are, especially between Books and Mrs. Rogers. They can communicate whole conversations worth of information with just a look between them. As is so often the case, what makes the scenes powerful are the things they don’t say.

And second is that there’s a certain “meta” element to the movie. The Shootist was John Wayne’s last film, and he would die of cancer only a few years after it was filmed. But that’s only the beginning of the parallels between the film’s plot and its behind-the-scenes reality. It’s about the end of the era of the Wild West, with Books as its last representative. As the sheriff tells him:

“The old days are gone, and you don’t know it. We’ve got waterworks, telephones, lights. We’ll have our streetcar electrified next year, and we’ve started to pave the streets. We’ve still got some weeding to do, but once we’re rid of people like you, we’ll have a goddamn Garden of Eden here. To put it in a nutshell, you’ve plain, plumb outlived your time.”

And the film itself is likewise the end of an era for Hollywood. Besides Wayne, you’ve got Lauren Bacall and Jimmy Stewart playing Mrs. Rogers and Doc Hostetler, two more stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood who grew gray in its service. Everything about the movie really does convey that, as Jim Morrison would say, “this is The End, beautiful friend.”

It’s really this element that elevates the film from just another “aging cowboy comes back for one more fight” story into something more sweeping and powerful. Some of the lines about sorrow and death seem more powerful coming from an actor delivering his last performance, and an actress who witnessed her own husband succumb to cancer.

In other words, I recommend this movie, even if you don’t particularly like John Wayne’s brand of Western. It’s surprisingly subtle and it packs an emotional punch, especially in the raw and poignant final scene, in which nary a word is spoken, but the actors’ faces and movements convey their tremendous anguish and turmoil.