Watch Doc Holliday’s Duel With Johnny Ringo

Val Kilmer’s death on Tuesday, from pneumonia at 65, hit Western movie fans especially hard. In 1993’s Tombstone, Kilmer delivered one of the most indelible performances in the genre’s history as the tubercular dentist and gambler John Henry “Doc” Holliday. Beset by coughing fits, alcoholism, and a healthy dose of self-loathing, Kilmer’s portrayal emphasized the human frailty of an Old West legend over masculine bravado. Which isn’t to say Kilmer’s Holliday, as quick with his Colt .45 as he was with his tongue, wasn’t to be feared.

Kilmer played up all of those traits in the film’s climactic scene, an intimate man-to-man duel with the gunfighter Johnny Ringo (a devilish Michael Biehn), that stands as arguably the best gun battle of the modern Western era — even if only two shots were fired.

Supposedly back at the ranch, bedridden by his tuberculosis, Holliday emerges from the shadows of the Arizona high desert to surprise the lightning-fast Ringo, who was expecting to make easy work of Kurt Russell’s Wyatt Earp. “I didn’t think you had it in ya,” Ringo sneers, assuming the silhouette is that of Earp. “I’m your huckleberry,” Kilmer replies as Holliday, before drawling, “Why, Johnny Ringo, you look like somebody just walked over your grave,” and instantly adding a pair of oft-repeated quotes to the cinematic canon.

While Ringo tries to insist the fight is between him and Earp, Holliday says not so fast, sir, citing a quarrel earlier in the film. “We started a game we never got to finish,” Kilmer says, adding a vulnerable cough as a misdirection. “Play for blood.”

And then it’s on, both men circling and sizing up the other with their hands tapping their pearl-handled revolvers. “Say when,” Holliday says calmly. Eyes dart, brows furrow, and Holliday lets slip a slight grin, before skinning that smoke wagon and firing one shot into Ringo’s forehead. “You’re no daisy!” he goads him, as Ringo lurches forward like a zombie and vainly discharges his weapon into the ground.

With Ringo dead, Earp rushes in, late to what would have been his own demise, if not for Holliday’s show of loyalty. “Oh, I wasn’t quite as sick as I made out,” he tells Earp.

Thirty-two years later, the scene remains an understated classic, proof that gun battles needn’t be the overly dramatic shoot-em-ups that populate so many popcorn Westerns — Tombstone included. The movie’s centerpiece, “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral,” plays out loudly for two minutes. The real-life shootout? Just over 30 seconds.