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The Searchers

1956

John Ford

John Wayne, Natalie Wood, Jeffrey Hunter, Ward Bond ...

8.0

33,170

Western. Adventure Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), a case-hardened Civil War veteran, returns 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 ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Dave Kehr Chicago Reader	"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"	POS
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"Contains scenes of magnificence, and one of John Wayne's best performances (...) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United Kingdom	Xan Brooks The Guardian	"The confusion serves only to dampen the drama. Wayne is all wrong and the tone is a mess. It feels as if Ford is cooking the right kind of movie with the wrong set of ingredients."	NEG
United States	Bosley Crowther The New York Times	"A rip-snorting Western, as brashly entertaining as they come (...) John Wayne is uncommonly commanding"	POS
United States	Martin Scorsese The Hollywood Reporter	"Like all great works of art, it's uncomfortable (...) It's the greatest performance of a great American actor [Wayne]"	POS
United States	Stephen Metcalf Slate	"It is preposterous in its plotting, spasmodic in its pacing, unfunny in its hijinks, bipolar in its politics, alternately sodden and convulsive in its acting, not to mention boring. Impossible to enjoy"	NEG
United Kingdom	Kim Newman Empire	"It was a John Wayne western, and lapped up its mix of Injun-fightin' action, rough comic knockabout and intense, emotional storyline. Seen now, it is all that and much, much more (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Ronald Holloway Variety	"It's a western in the grand scale - handsomely mounted (...) The VistaVision-Technicolor photographic excursion through the southwest (...) is eyefilling and impressive."	POS
United Kingdom	Tom Milne Time Out	"A marvellous Western (...) [A film with] visual splendour and muscular poetry"	POS
United Kingdom	Tom Hutchinson Radio Times	"This masterpiece western of revenge and reconciliation from director John Ford is massive and unmissable. It touches the heart of racist darkness and cleanses itself in the process (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS

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