The Ending

You may be right but boo the ending did very much indicate that Audie was doomed because of his injury and even his departing words indicated he knew it was coming. Remember many people wanted to kill Murphy but were afraid of his fast gun which now is a non factor because of his injury. As he rides away it is obvious his doom is in the near future.

That's a great point and I bet that is exactly what happened. Good HAS to triumph, but Audie COULDN"T be killed.

I always think of the evil in this movie as the scummy, whiny, guilt ridden, jackasses in of Lordsburg, including the Dr and his father who ultimatly enable them all and actually stand with them when they mob up.
The Doc's fiance is good, her father is not a whiner (but you donot care if he dies) and the miner guy that goes to fight the ones he thought hired Gant to kill him. Near the very end, he ends up shot but alive and he is not part of the mob scene, he is cool. He is the one who the docter comes to his house to see his sick kid.

Yeah, so Gant was okay, really, just doing a job the law should have been dpoing. lol
I always want to root for him, the way people always root for Cagney's charactors, even though he played some pretty horrible people. lol

addie

Spoilers!

I think there was another reason they didn't want to have Murphy killed off in a death scene. At the time this movie was made he was very popular both as an actor and war hero which was well deserved. He made a very good movie a couple of years before called Night Passage with James Stewart. Murphy held his own in acting in that movie but I remember his fans were upset that they had him killed off with a death scene. I think in this movie rather than have the death scene they just hinted strong about his doom. I may be wrong but I think the feelings of his fans had a big factor in this.

My father ran a drive in movie back then and I remember Murphy starred with Burt Lancaster in the 1960 movie The Unforgiven and had third billing under Burt Lancaster and Audry Hepburn. I had some friends who were Audie Murphy fans and when they drove up they were asking if they would like the movie. I remember they were upset with his death scene in Night Passage and didn't want to see another one. I told them "They get in trouble at the end but Audie Murphy saves them." They smiled and said "That is what we want to see - Audie Murphy saving them." They were satisfied and enjoyed the movie. :)

Spoilers

The only other movies where Audie got killed on screen was the 1950 movie The Kid From Texas which would have been expected as he played Billy the Kid and this was made early in his career.
In the 1958 movie The Quiet American he is killed off early in the movie but there was no death scene and the movie was shown in flash back. He made this movie right after Night Passage and he was probably signed to make it before the backlast of that death scene. In this version the movie deviated much from the book unlike the 2002 version. Here Murphy's character is actually portrayed as a hero. I have heard the book's author was unhappy with this movie.

The ending is great because it is ambivalent, just as ambivalent as the character of John Gant and the whole movie. It would have been flat and tedious to have Gant killed, a simplistic good vs evil ending is for children only!