Director Henry Hathaway gets the most of his actors in this cowboy drama. After seven years in prison, ex-convict and aging gunfighter Clay Lomax(Gregory Peck)sets out on the trail with revenge on his mind. Lomax is in search of former partner turned adversary, Bobby Jay Jones(Robert F. Lyons). Bobby and his saddle pals seem to be out looking for fun...Lomax is looking for blood. Lomax may be a hardened man, but he shows his soft side when he becomes burdened with taking care of a cute young orphan girl named Decky(Dawn Lyn). Lyn seems to steal the movie with the banter between her and Peck. Another scene stealer is Susan Tyrell, who plays Alma the quirky ride-a-long with Bobby's gang. Others in the cast: Patricia Quinn, James Gregory, Rita Gam and John Davis Chandler. Not among the best westerns, but very worth while.

The overall plot and suspense elements of this movie are excellent and deserved far better treatment. There really was a fine movie underneath it all, but it was sunk to mediocrity due to three factors:

1. The child actress is awfully annoying. No, wait,...she was #@&%$# annoying!! Not only couldn't she act convincingly in many scenes, but the writers couldn't decide whether to make her adorable or a filthy-mouthed cretin. I think they achieved the latter more than the former, dang-#%#&$!!.

2. Several times, Gregory Peck got the draw on the bad guys (i.e., captured them and could have shot them). The first time he let them go made little sense. But the second time, he KNEW they were murderers and yet after disarming them he let them go! DUH!!! I HATE to see supposedly smart characters do dumb things that no real person would do.

3. The prostitute who was kidnapped and manhandled throughout the movie by the bad guys was pretty annoying--in particular her voice. She sounded for all the world like June Foray--the voice of Rocky Squirrel from the Bullwinkle Show. I can't believe that one of the IMDb comments praised her acting and felt she was a star on the rise.

BUT, despite these big problems, the final half of the movie was pretty rousing and kept the tension going. In particular, the ending was excellent. Too bad the unevenness really spoiled the overall effort. Gregory Peck deserved better material.

Shoot Out for all intents and purposes was the last film that Henry Hathaway directed. He did do one more, but from what I'm able to gather very few ever saw it. It's also not a great western for Gregory Peck who in his day has given us classics like The Gunfighter, The Big Country, and The Bravados.

Gregory Peck plays a man just out of prison who's looking for his partner from a bank robbery who shot him and took all the loot. Peck's got an understandable mission. But he's also been saddled with another situation. Some wild oats he sowed in the person of little Dawn Lyn arrived by train, a present from her late mother.

In the meantime ex-partner James Gregory is now a prosperous rancher, but he can't get any decent help. He hires three punks, Robert F. Lyons, John Davis Chandler, and Pepe Serna to locate Peck and merely keep him informed of his movements. These three are not only punks, but extremely dim bulbs. I can hardly believe Gregory can't do better than these.

How Peck deals with both situations is the balance of the film. A lot of the plot scenario has not been well thought out in Shoot Out. The cast struggles, but their hearts are clearly not in it.

Best in the cast is Susan Tyrell who plays a prostitute who takes up with the three punks. She's a 19th century version of a Valley Girl and she pays big time for her stupidity and very bad taste in men.

Definitely not one of the better films for Henry Hathaway and Gregory Peck. And to think two years earlier, Hathaway and screenwriter Marguerite Roberts were responsible for True Grit.