The Shooting

Monte Hellman’s film stars Warren Oates and Will Hutchins as two bounty hunters hired by Millie Perkins to lead her across the desert. Joined by psycho gunman Jack Nicholson, the four become an uneasy, shifting mess of loyalties and alliances as Hellman slowly unreels the reasons behind the quest., Director Monte Hellman used his beloved “hunter as hunted” theme for his near-existential western The Shooting. Jack Nicholson and Warren Oates are starred in this bare-bones tale of an ex-bounty hunter (Oates) with a price on his head and the cocky young gun (Nicholson) who hopes to collect. The film seems to be exclusively populated by Life’s Losers; but even with portents of doom throughout, the ending is still a jaw-dropping experience. Demonstrating the parsimony he’d learned while working with Roger Corman, director Hellman shot The Shooting in Utah simultaneously with another feature, Ride in the Whirlwind, for a combined budget of $150,000. Completed in 1967, The Shooting did not receive widespread release until after Jack Nicholson achieved stardom in the early 1970s., An ex-bounty hunter and his partner are hired to escort a strange woman across the desert and are soon joined by a volatile gunslinger. Before long, the ex-bounty hunter discovers he’s been hoodwinked into taking part in a revenge plot.