Drifter, and highly decorated soldier, Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), is coming back home to see his brother when Comanche Indians kill Ethan’s family, and capture his two nieces Debbi (played by Lanna Wood and Natalie Wood) and Lucy (Pippa Scott). Ethan is now on a mission to kill the Chief, Scar, and try and get his nieces back if they haven’t been killed.
This is John Wayne at his finest; he plays such a gritty and dramatic role as Ethan Edwards, a man who was let down by the army and how crime has driven him to become a drifter.
Also, this is one of the only times John Wayne does not truly play a good guy, and instead plays more of an anti-hero. John Ford, the director, truly gives you a major sense of worry with every scene filmed, with big panoramic wide shots that take in the entire dusty, rocky scenery as well as closeups on John Wayne to give perspective on how anger and madness is driving him.
The film also gives you some perspective since there were three cameras recording during this film, and they called it Vista Vision; it was a 35mm camera, wide screen format for films. The script is excellently written because, in my opinion, the overall theme of this film is about a man who knows what he has to do to find his nieces, but also how a person who has always done bad things becomes, at times, blind to the true goal of saving his nieces and instead is revenge driven.
Everything about this film is perfectly pieced together and shows you how a person is grieving and also trying to get revenge while saving his family, and is not sure how to juggle all these emotions due to everything being clouded by anger and sadness.
I truly recommend this dramatic, epic, western of revenge and heroism. I give the acting 10 gold bars, the directing 9.5 gold bars, and for writing I give 8 gold bars. Overall, it’s a 10, and I will see you the next time you want to come back to the movies.