The story follows Willett Gashade, an ex-bounty hunter who returns home searching for his brother, only to discover that he has disappeared. He is met by Coley, a frazzled cowboy and along with a beautiful but tempestuous woman the eclectic trio set out across the Utah desert. Along the way Gashade is reluctantly joined by the menacing presence of bounty hunter Billy Spear and as the tension escalates so violence becomes inevitable. Monte Hellman reinvented the Western genre with 'The Shooting', a cryptic tale of revenge that has become an underground masterpiece of existentialism.