The Gunfighter

"If I was doing you a favor I'd let them hang you now and get it all over with. But I don't want you to get off that light. I want you to go on being a big tough gunny. I want you to see what it means to have to live like a big tough gunny. So don't thank me yet partner. You'll see what it means."
-Gregory Peck in The Gunfighter

Peck's character, Jimmy Ringo, the quickest, meanest gun i the west, has just been shot in the back by a young gun, whose only desire is to be known as the quickest, meanest gun in the west. "He don't look so tough," the young chap says earlier in the movie.

As Ringo lies dying, the sheriff and townsfolk want to quickly punish the cowardly actions of the young but now famous gunfighter. But Ringo intervenes. He doesn't want his killer to get off that easily. The last years of his life have been hell; every town he goes to, every place he roams, there is some young kid who wants to challenge him. The weight of his reputation collapses any pride, any benefits, any pleasure his life's accomplishments might have held.

He has come to his last and lost chance, seeking his only love, now the town's teacher, who is struggling to raise the couple's child in anonymity. She wants no part of Ringo. She knows life with him is no way to raise a young boy. When Ringo gets to meet his son, we see the sorrow at what might have been.

Ringo also meets a young struggling rancher, and the every day obstacles in that man's life seem so much simpler than one where every moment might mean death. The vurden of fame has turned Ringo into a sullen, broken, isolated man.

Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven paints a similar picture. Eastwood plays a quick tempered, weathered cowboy named William Munny. HIs wife, the person led him off his outlaw, villent, sinful past, has died, leaving him to raise two children.

When a neighboring woman is brutally sliced up by a cowboy, a reward is posted calling for the man's death. Munny struggles with his conscience. He knows his wife would disapprove, yet the road ahead for him and the kids seems too much to bear. With the prodding of another young cowboy, "You don't seem so tough," munny is persuaded to pursue the reward and relunctantly get back into the killing business that he is now a legend in; a legen he has tried to leave behind.

Unforgiven seems to say that the nature of humans is evil. Even the love of an angel, and the abstinence from whiskey, can't erase the demons that drive us all. The sheriff (wonderfully played by Gene Hackman), the artists/writers, the business folk, the prostitutes, and even his children can't escape the pressures of what is expected.

As one man learns to kill, another is killed by the law whose goal is to prevent killing; and who is trying to hold the town together about as effectively as the leaky roof he has built for himself "to watch the sunset."

The message of both films, made 43 years apart is that you can't escape your nature, and the expectations of those around you. To seek a simpler, more peaceful and moral way of life is a futile struggle.