John Wayne’s Final Movie Is Officially Getting a New Streaming Release

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Despite his dislike for director John Ford, Quentin Tarantino is a self-professed mega-fan of John Wayne. The trouble is that Wayne and Ford have done the best work of their careers together. This has put Tarantino in an awkward position, forced to offer begrudging appreciation for movies such as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Stagecoach, and The Searchers. Wayne remains the greatest icon in the history of Western cinema, with a career spanning several decades. Now, the final film of his iconic run as a movie star has been added to a free streaming platform.

While the movie wasn’t directed by Ford — a filmmaker Tarantino has admitted he hates — it drew a mixed response from the Django Unchained filmmaker. Tarantino wrote about the movie in his non-fiction book “Cinema Speculation,” and noted that the movie in question doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel. Although it does offer the unique experience of watching a dying icon deliver his final screen performance. And this was more than enough for Tarantino.

He wrote, “The film really only has one purpose: to be a cinematic eulogy to Wayne’s career. Not only is that a dubious reason to make a film, the maudliness inherently involved in such an endeavor seems a dishonorable pursuit for any serious artist. But as suspicious as I am when a director tries to tug on my heartstrings, even I think John Wayne ending his career with Rooster Cogburn & Lady would be a damn shame.” Directed by Don Siegel, the movie was released in 1976, and Wayne died in 1979.

Four icons and four completely different ways of walking into trouble.
This is the one you would have been out there, why it fits, and what it would have cost you.

You have never explained yourself and you have never needed to,
because people work out fairly quickly that you are the most capable person in the room
without you ever having to mention it.

• Eastwood built the character out of everything he refused to do, stripping away the
  backstory, the speeches and every bit of reassurance until only the competence was left.
• You keep your own counsel, and while other people occasionally find that unnerving, you
  have never felt any real need to fix it for them.
• The Dollars films work because he genuinely is in it for himself right up until the
  moment he is not, and he never explains that part either.
• You would be gone before anybody got a chance to thank you.

You are the funniest person in most rooms and the most loyal
person in all of them, and you would be genuinely insulted if somebody suggested those two
things were in any tension.

• Doc has no real reason to be in this fight beyond the fact that his friend is in it,
  which is the only reason he has ever needed for anything.
• You lead with wit, and it does a very effective job of hiding how seriously you take the
  handful of people you actually care about.
• Val Kilmer’s performance is the most quoted in the entire genre because the jokes keep
  getting sharper as the situation gets worse.
• You would spend everything you had on this and still describe it as a good week.

You never wanted this job, and you took it anyway because the
alternative was standing there watching somebody less careful do it badly, which is the most
Western reason there has ever been.

• Earp is the reluctant authority figure, a man who came to town specifically to be left
  alone and somehow ended up answerable for all of it.
• You are protective by instinct, so when something goes wrong your first thought is who
  is exposed rather than who is to blame.
• These films understand that keeping order costs far more than breaking it, and that the
  person holding the line almost never gets thanked.
• You would do the whole thing again, and you would complain about it the entire time.

Nobody has ever successfully talked you out of something you had
already decided was right, and a long line of grown adults has found that out the hard way.

• Mattie is the most relentless character in the Western canon and she manages it through
  argument, paperwork and flat refusal rather than a fast draw.
• You have no patience for being managed, so you negotiate, you check the details and you
  turn up exactly when you said you would.
• True Grit is the rare Western where the moral centre is the youngest person on screen
  and every adult around her has to catch up.
• You would get what you came for, and the film is honest about what that takes out of
  you.

Here’s Where You Can Watch the Western Swan Song for Free

• Image via Paramount

• Image via Paramount Pictures

• Image via Paramount Pictures

• Image via Paramount Pictures

• Image via Paramount Pictures

• Image via Paramount

• Image via Paramount Pictures

• Image via Paramount Pictures

• Image via Paramount Pictures

• Image via Paramount Pictures

We’re talking, of course, about The Shootist. The movie follows a dying gunslinger who puts his affairs in order before hanging up his boots one last time. Also starring James Stewart, Lauren Bacall, and a young Ron Howard, the movie now holds a 79% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Simple in story while sophisticated in texture, The Shootist is a fittingly elegiac swan song for one of Hollywood’s most iconic stars.”

You can watch the film on Pluto TV this month. Meanwhile, Tarantino is gearing up for the release of The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, a spin-off of his 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The upcoming movie features Brad Pitt as the titular character, with David Fincher serving as director. Tarantino has long claimed that he will retire after making his 10th film, which is why he didn’t direct this one.

Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

The Shootist