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The Searchers

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The Searchers (1956)

98%
100%
93%
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N/A
98 %
Reviews Counted: 42 Fresh: 41  Rotten:1 Average Rating: 8.9/10

How does the Tomatometer work?

The Tomatometer measures the percentage of positive reviews from Approved Tomatometer Critics for a certain movie.[-]

Runtime: 2 hrs 35 mins

Synopsis: A classic Western regarded by many as the best of the genre, John Ford's THE SEARCHERS has been acknowledged by several directors who came into their own in the 1970s, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Paul Schrader, and George Lucas, as a powerful influence on their work. The film... A classic Western regarded by many as the best of the genre, John Ford's THE SEARCHERS has been acknowledged by several directors who came into their own in the 1970s, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Paul Schrader, and George Lucas, as a powerful influence on their work. The film stars John Wayne as Ethan Edwards, a case-hardened Civil War veteran returning to his brother Aaron's (Walter Coy) Texas home in 1868. When Rev. Samuel Johnson Clayton (Ward Bond) arrives to raise a posse to run down the Comanche who have stolen the cattle of neighbor Lars Jorgenson (John Qualen), Ethan is among those who join him. They return to find the Edwards family slaughtered and the two girls, Lucy (Pippa Scott) and Debbie (Natalie Wood), missing. The posse continues to search for the girls but turns back as winter settles in. However, Ethan and his reluctantly accepted companion, Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), the girls' part-Cherokee stepbrother, press on for another seven years, with the Indian-hating veteran becoming ever more fanatical as the hard seasons pass. In his epic meditation on racism, obsession, paranoia, and the myth of the West, Ford explores the ugly underside of a genre that he had imbued with optimism in his early career. Wayne gives perhaps his most powerful performance as the embittered Edwards, but it's the visual poetry of what are possibly Ford's most carefully framed, lit, and composed images that shape this masterwork from beginning to end. As Wayne walks through the doorway at the film's end, he grabs his elbow in a tribute to his and Ford's close friend Harry Carey Sr., a Western film icon who had passed away a few years before. [More]

Genre: Westerns

Starring: John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood

Director: John Ford
Screenwriter: Frank S. Nugent
Producer: Merian C. Cooper, C. V. Whitney
Composer: Max Steiner

DVD Info

Release:

May 22, 2007

[DVD Details]

DVD Features:

  • Widescreen 1.65

Audio:

  • Mono 1.0 English, Spanish, French

Buy It On DVD

Reviews

 
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1 - 20 (sorted by date)
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Ratings Image
N/A

A mature, dark, ambivalent piece that helped pave the way for the modern western.

Full Review | comment Comment
05/13/08
Channel 4 Film
Ratings Image
4.5/5

An absolute must see.

Full Review | comment Comment
12/07/07
Keith H. Brown
Eye for Film
Ratings Image
5/5

A truly great western.

comment Comment
09/16/07
Cole Smithey
ColeSmithey.com
Ratings Image
N/A

Some fine vignettes of frontier life in the early southwest and a realistic presentation of the difficulties faced by the settlers in carving out a homestead in dangerous Indian country.

Full Review | comment Comment
06/27/07
Ronald Holloway
Variety
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
Ratings Image
N/A

Through the central image of the frontier, the meeting point of wilderness and civilization, Ford explores the divisions of our national character, with its search for order and its need for violence, its spirit of community and its quest for independence

Full Review | comment Comment
06/27/07
Dave Kehr
Chicago Reader
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
Ratings Image
5/5

John Wayne at his best, striking cinematography and character ambiguity makes this a powerful and thought-provoking Wild West Odyssey.

Full Review | comment Comment
06/07/06
Empire Magazine
Ratings Image
8/10

...a much more multi-layered Western than most other such examples of the genre, and it is surely a classic of its kind.

Full Review | comment Comment
05/28/06
John J. Puccio
DVDTown.com
Ratings Image
5/5

One of Ford's undisputed masterpiecs and a quintessential text of the 1950s, a rare Western that explores the deep roots of racism (and sexism) in American life, and gives John Wayne his most complex performance as the anomic hero.

Full Review | comment Comment
05/03/06
Emanuel Levy
EmanuelLevy.Com
Ratings Image
5/5

The minute The Searchers begins, it's impossible to look away.

Full Review | comment Comment
04/05/06
Chris Cabin
Filmcritic.com
Ratings Image
5/5

John Wayne's best film, which says a prairie-full. Haunting, unforgettable.

comment Comment
02/18/06
Steve Crum
Video-Reviewmaster.com
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N/A

There is perhaps some discrepancy in the play between Wayne's heroic image and the pathological outsider he plays here (forever excluded from home, as the doorway shots at beginning and end suggest), but it hardly matters, given the film's visual splendou

Full Review | comment Comment
02/09/06
Derek Adams
Time Out
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4/5

No review available.

comment Comment
10/09/05
Chuck O'Leary
Fantastica Daily
Ratings Image
5/5

No review available.

comment Comment
07/16/05
Emanuel Levy
EmanuelLevy.Com
Ratings Image
A+

It may also be the best American movie, or at least the most American movie ....

Full Review | comment Comment
02/14/05
Philip Martin
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Ratings Image
5/5

THE great American western.

comment Comment
01/12/05
Jonathan R. Perry
Tyler Morning Telegraph (Texas)
Ratings Image
A-

The Searchers's reputation is so widely accepted that it's a surprise to discover that the film, and Wayne's character, are more complex than the reputation suggests.

Full Review | comment Comment
11/22/04
Steven D. Greydanus
Decent Films Guide
Ratings Image
4/4

This is a film for the ages.

Full Review | comment Comment
11/19/04
Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
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1/5

No review available.

comment Comment
07/03/04
Joshua Tanzer
Offoffoff
Ratings Image
4/5

No review available.

comment Comment
05/21/04
Nicolas Lacroix
EnPrimeur.ca
Ratings Image
5/5

No review available.

comment Comment
01/29/04
Chris Barsanti
Filmcritic.com
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