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The Searchers Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: RESTORED MASTERPIECE !!!
Comment: Being 50,I can't take technology for granted. To go from black and white television where the only way to change the channel was to get up and go to the knob on the TV, to a widescreen, completely restored print of a 50 year-old John Wayne/John Ford Classic is almost indescribable.
BUY THIS DVD !!! TRUST ME.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Searchers
Comment: "The Searchers" is an epic and great western story. I saw the movie many years ago and it was wonderful to see it again.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Search for a Lost Girl
Comment: This film is set in 1868 Texas. Uncle Ethan visits his relatives in a dry dusty land. Ethan wears a grey coat and blue trousers. Ethan remarks about Martin's ancestry as if it was unusual. He gives a locket to Debra. Ethan's double eagles are freshly minted. [This could signify he rode with the James Gang.] Visitors drop by with news of a cattle theft. Could it be the feared Comanches? The house appears quite large inside, and well furnished. The posse follows the trail of the stolen cattle only to find them butchered. Was it a ruse to draw the armed men away? Whose home would be attacked? The returning men find fire, ashes, and bodies. Ethan, Brad, and Martin set out to search for those who attacked the family and rescue the kidnapped girls. The small group of white men are able to fight off a much larger group of Indians. Then they separate.

The film follows Ethan and Martin on their search for Debbie. Brad attacked the Indians in revenge for Lucy's death. They return to the Jorgenson's home. Martin wants to join Ethan in the search for Debbie. [A $1,000 reward seems much too high.] A letter brings news to the Jorgenson family. [This is played for laughs.] We see a herd of buffalo, then a troop of cavalry. An Indian camp was massacred. Martin is now a widower. Ethan doesn't find Debbie at the Army post among the survivors. They continue to search. An old Mexican sells them news of Chief Scar. Has Debbie grown up? There is drama in the meeting, and the attack on Ethan and Martin. Ethan has made a holographic will making Martin his sole heir. Debbie is dead to him.

Ethan and Martin return to the Jorgenson's home. They are wanted men for the deaths of Futterman and his men. Their daughter is set to be married to a man who is not her first choice. Martin and Charlie fight. The Cavalry arrives with news about Chief Scar being nearby. What are Ethan's plans for Debbie? Martin wants to rescue Debbie. They attack the Comanche camp successfully. "Let's go home." Will there be a happy ending for all?

John Wayne does not appear to be happy in this film. Was it changed much from the book? What about the charges against Ethan and Martin? What will happen to Debbie? Will Martin marry Miss Jorgenson? These loose ends are not tied up, as if they ran out of time or money to finish this film. What was the significance of Mose, a man with alopecia? This film is an example of myth-making, or revisionist history from Hollywood. I don't believe Indians would steal cattle only to kill them; its not cost-effective and goes against human nature. This novel was serialized in `The Saturday Evening Post', a popular literary magazine of that time. Its stories were often filmed.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Blu- Ray review ..Magnificent transfer+++++++++++++
Comment: First of all ,the Movie is a Masterpiece ..but better than that is the transfer to Blu-ray ...the Scenery in Monument Valley is Simply Breathtaking ,the Definition ,the Clarity is STUNNING ,WATCH THIS MOVIE AND YOU WILL BE AMAZED...The Acting by ALL especially WAYNE is Wonderful ,this is in my TOP FIVE Movies of all Time.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Best of the westerns
Comment: Controversy has swirled around this western ever since its release in 1956. Chief among the criticisms leveled at it is John Wayne's Ethan Edwards' "racist" hatred of the Comanches, manifested from the first minute he sees his brother's stepson, who is one-eighth Indian. In this day and age, when anything that smacks of "racism" is deemed to lower a work of art's rating, Edwards' freely voiced antipathy to the Indians is considered by many to be more than sufficient to demote this film from "Best Western of all time," which some have called it.

I don't feel that way about "The Searchers." Ethan Edwards was a product of his time and society, and thus would not have stuck out as particularly "different" among Southern and Western men of that day. After all, it is made clear that he fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War.

The only flaw I find in the depiction of Edwards' racial views is that the movie never makes quite clear why he holds them to such an extreme degree. None of the other settlers appear to share his smoldering hatred of the Comanche. I have read a review which says that one can catch a fleeting glimpse of a tombstone in the scene in the cemetery; the epitaph states that a woman with the last name "Edwards" was killed by the Comanche years earlier. Could this have been Ethan's mother? His wife? No clue is ever given.

All that having been said, the film is, I think, probably the greatest western ever made, partly because of the intense character study it does of Ethan Edwards. It does not condemn him as a "racist," or as anything else. It merely shows him to us; the decision is ours to make. And I disagree with some reviewers who believe that Edwards seems to see the "error of his ways" in the final scenes. He sees no such thing. Look at his face in the more intense scenes leading up to the attack on Scar's camp, and you can see both rage and hatred etched in that face. Then look at his face again, in the brief shot just after he has exited Scar's tent, the dead Indian's scalp in his hand, and you'll see the hatred and anger gone; it has been purged by Scar's execution. When he approaches his niece, kidnapped five years before by the Indians and presumably having been "sleeping with a buck" -- Edwards' reason for wanting earlier to kill her -- one can tell by his manner that he now comes only to carry her home safely.

Perhaps it's the mark of a great movie when people can disagree, often strongly, about its characters and meanings. "The Searchers" is one of those great movies.

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