There is a distinct flavor of the brawnily austere Westerns that comprise Budd Boetticher’s cult-favorite Ranown Cycle — and more than a hint of another showcase for the great Randolph Scott, Sam Peckinpah’s “Ride the High Country” — in director Michael Feifer’s “Last Shoot Out,” a small-budget indie that aims to please the currently underserved niche audience for oaters.To be sure, no one will ever confuse this slow-paced concoction with one of the classics that so obviously influence it.
But it’s definitely a cut above some of the recent streaming-ready attempts to sustain the genre — indeed, it’s a marked improvement over Feifer’s own “Catch the Bullet,” released just last September — and it features a ferociously nasty turn by Bruce Dern in a role that recalls a character from yet another golden oldie, Walter Brennan’s vicious Old Man Clanton in “My Darling Clementine.”Dern doesn
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