150 Word Review: 'The Searchers' (1956)
This is the Wayne
Ethan Edwards is one of pop culture’s great anti-heroes, a sour Civil War vet who hates the local indigenous people before he’s given a reason to hate them. He's played by John Wayne, a movie star whose talents are limited but effective—no one scowls like The Duke, who moseys like a sleepy mountain lion. The Searchers was his ninth movie with director John Ford, who helped shape America's myths almost as much as anyone. The movie is stunning, even if Arizona's eye-popping Monument Valley is cast as the Lone Star State, the technicolor reds and oranges, the ancient buttes, and vast horizons fill the screen.
Before The Searchers, westerns told simple stories about right versus wrong, good versus evil, cowboys versus Comanche. But Wayne’s Edwards is an avenging angel stalking the lonely frontier for a kidnapped child, his niece, the last survivor of a massacre. He is driven by rage.