The Searchers (1956)
98 %
Reviews Counted: 42 Fresh: 41 Rotten:1 Average Rating: 8.9/10
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... [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
Screenwriter: Frank S. Nugent
Producer: Merian C. Cooper, C. V. Whitney
Composer: Max Steiner
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Reviews
A mature, dark, ambivalent piece that helped pave the way for the modern western.
Comment
05/13/08
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.
06/27/07
Top Critic
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
06/27/07
Top Critic
John Wayne at his best, striking cinematography and character ambiguity makes this a powerful and thought-provoking Wild West Odyssey.
06/07/06
...a much more multi-layered Western than most other such examples of the genre, and it is surely a classic of its kind.
05/28/06
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.
05/03/06
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
02/09/06
It may also be the best American movie, or at least the most American movie ....
02/14/05
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.
11/22/04
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