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Poor Kim Coates. To be killed once in an iconic fashion may be seen as a misfortune; to be killed twice looks like carelessness. Not content with not heeding Joe Hallenbeck’s advice in The Last Boy Scout (see no.15), the 49 year-old actor is given memorably short shrift by Kevin Costner’s Charley Waite in this wonderful throwback Western. Coates plays Butler, the sadistic right-hand man to Michael Gambon’s villainous Denton Baxter and, as they line up against Costner and Duvall in preparation for the final showdown, there’s tension in the air. Tension soon broken by Costner. "You the one killed our friend?" he asks Butler, who smiles, evilly. “That’s right. I shot the boy, too, and I enjoyed it.” They’re the last words he ever utters, as Costner walks up to him and shoots him right between the eyes. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you start a gunfight.
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