The Shooting

Wow, an unheard-of Western starring Jack Nicholson and Warren Oates? I was so stoked for this, but it turns out that this movie was never released theatrically because it's rubbish. There's a handful of really great shots randomly interspersed with endless scenes of four caricatures wandering through the desert. There's some decent intrigue, but no one has any depth, no one's motivations are ever explained, and the ending resolves nothing. The sound quality is just awful, too.

Coasts a long way on little more than atmosphere. There's a progression of landscape throughout the journey that I found almost more interesting than the story itself. It's a small cast and everyone is pretty good, except for Nicholson who is excellent in his supporting role and operating about 10 levels higher than everyone else around him

At first I didn't know where this was going, but it kind of grew on me halfway through. It's nice to see the contrast between the ones trying to be decent and cause no trouble, and the ones destroying everything they touch in their quest. I didn't get the end though.

What an odd movie. It's difficult to figure out what anyone's motives are in this (aside from money). Warren Oates's character is the only one with any discernible decency (okay, and sweet, dim Coley).. Perkins is such a rabid cunt you want to leave the room every time she opens her mouth to speak. And matters are not helped one bit by the relentless, '60's-horror-movie score. As usual, I agree with Pauline Kael: "Monte Hellman asks a lot for the little he gives."

A fragmented anti-Western that mines some brilliantly existential territory to create a film that is as much Mann or Boetticher as it is Bergman or Antonioni. At times, it's like Monte Hellman doesn't even know how to make a movie, which only heightens the film's hallucinatory sense of fatalism. Warren Oates and Jack Nicholson are just the icing on the proverbial cake.

I wish there was an infinite supply of Monte Hellman/Warren Oates collabs. Great existential western that does a lot with its miniscule budget.

A lo-fi western distilled to a sun-parched abstraction. While the finale reveals some depth to the film it also seemed to drag leading up to that. Warren Oates made it for me.

Unlike the standard revisionist westerns of the period, which take western tropes and strip them down to just violence and mythology, Hellman strips out the mythology too. This is a western as a brutal, existentialist road trip with our quartet of protagonists marching through harsh desert landscapes to either their goal or death.

Coley can be forgiven for simping because if Millie Perkins walked into your camp you would be a blubbering fool too

Middle of the road, slow-burning, low-budget western co-"starring" Jack Nicholson. Conceptually functional (maybe even interesting), but the direction and the acting can't carry it to where it needs to be. The performances are inconsistent but, more often than not, a bit lame and the editing is sometimes jarringly choppy. The soundtrack also sounds like it's from a retro episode of Doctor Who; I found the association comical.

Only Coley makes this film bearable. I loved how he maintains his naiveness. Probably one of the most extraordinary western characters out there! Apart from this interesting and sweet character, everything and everyone is just a mystery to me. At first, it builds tension but later on nothing resolves and I become uninterested.

Barren landscapes and haggard close ups, Monte Hellman's Western is both contemplative and bleak. Warren Oates can do no wrong when given these chances to show desolation. A difficult but rewarding watch.

I think I was in the wrong frame of mind for this.

Spoiler alert: There is more than one shot in more than one scene.

You can feel yourself being destroyed along with the characters in this. Just so expertly paced. Nicholson is badass but Perkins is even better

The more I think about this the more I like it. Maybe Nicholson at his best?

Finally - a gal who doesn't make nice.

Monte Hellman western, I liked this a whole lot more than Two-Lane Blacktop. The characters and premise are a little thin and the movie carries itself entirely on mood and a little suspense, but at least it does that effectively.

Calm and slow-paced but still interesting because of the characters and cinematography.

If John Ford and Howard Hawks were chroniclers of the great myth of the Old West, Monte Hellman envisions their post-apocalypse. The Shooting is a spare and raggedy film, about suspect motivations staggering through a sun-scorched, wind-blown, saw-toothed hellscape.

For a short feature film, there's still not a lot going on here. A very slight story with bluntly drawn-out characters, this is a rather pretty, but dull slog to get through (just like the characters' own journey, though it isn't filmically rendered well here). Not even Jack Nicholson could save this, and the day-for-night is the worse I've ever seen. There's some very interesting and wonderfully made experimentation going on in the film's climax, I wish the rest of the film was as adventurous.

Interesting, if for nothing else, how little it takes to make a classic when you have so much talent.

I'm a fan of Monte Hellman, the cast is just lovely, and The Shooting is a curiosity for being that ultra-rare Western penned by a woman, but I just didn't find it all too interesting.

"Doesn't ask to be taken as an existentialist mechanism per say, though it certainly functions as one." - Ed Gonzalez

What's it all mean? It's Art.

Score based on distant memory.