The Searchers | Full Movie | Movies Anywhere

[John Ford] has taken an episodic but rather slim story and, with his well known talent for freshening up routine materials, has developed it into a sweeping sort of saga which might be labeled a Western in the grand manner.

The Searchers is full of landscapes so framed as to make one start with pleasure. But John Ford goes further. He establishes a relationship between man and landscape which is emotional as well as spatial.

[The Searchers] is undoubtedly one of the greatest Westerns ever made. For sheer scope, guts and beauty I can think of no picture... to compare with it. In it John Wayne delivers a performance that tops his great performance in The High and the Mighty.

The Searchers is a gripping bit of Americana that should appeal to all movie-goers.

[John Wayne's] performance lacks either complexity or consistency. Instead of complexity, we get occasional nastiness alternating with guarded but essentially genial humour. The moods of the film are equally uneven.