The Shootist

J.B. Books (John Wayne, in his final film role) is an aging gunfighter diagnosed with cancer who comes to Nevada at the turn of the 20th century. Renting a room from widowed Bond Rogers and her son Gillom, Books is confronted by several people of questionable motives, including a man seeking to avenge his brother's death and a few who are looking to profit from Books' notoriety. Not wanting to die a quiet, painful death, Books devises a plan to go out with a bang.

Review from rogerebert.com

He rides onscreen in The Shootist afraid that he is dying. Not afraid he’ll be killed, but afraid he’s dying, which is the last thing we anticipated a John Wayne character would do of his own accord. It is 1901: He has outlived his century. A sawbones in the next state has given him the bad news and now he wants to hear it from the lips of Doc Hostetler, who nursed him back to health after a violent afternoon twenty years ago. And so he rides, the Shootist, into a Carson City to which the Old West has become an embarrassment. The streets are still wide enough to turn a mule train in, but now an abashed little horse trolley runs down the middle of them, and electricity’s going to put the horse out of business next year. The pain is way down deep in his back, and he rideson a red velvet cushion he stole out of a whorehouse. It doesn’t do a damn bit of good. Hostetler hems and haws and comes out with it: cancer. Two months to live, six weeks, maybe less. In the meantime he can do what he wants. After a while he won’t feel like doing much.

In his time, the Shootist shot a lot of men dead. Out at the livery stable, burnt into the leather of his saddle, they find his name: J.B. Books. His arrival in Carson City immediately becomes news. Hostetler steers him over to a boarding house run by the Widow Rogers, who shows him a two-dollar room. It’ll do fine. Books settles down to die. But all these gunfighters had the same problem: People weren’t content to let them die in bed, because they made too good a trophy.

Read the rest of the review from Roger Ebert here...