Delayed Reaction: The Searchers

The Pitch: John Wayne goes Camanche huntin'.

I probably would've never seen this movie if not for The Great Movie Ride at Disney World. I'm slowly working my way through the films in that attraction. By my measure, I still have Footlight Parade, The Public Enemy, A Fistful of Dollars, and Tarzan the Ape Man to go*.

*Supposing they never update the attraction.

I'm also slowly introducing myself to more Westerns. I saw The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly quite a while back and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance more recently. The Searchers is basically the Western you think of in the generic sense. John Wayne is the lone hero fighting Indians on the frontier. That's all I needed from this.

In looking this movie up, I see that it's greatly influential. Influence is something that's hard to track. Something like John Wayne's introductory shot certainly looks familiar (apparently it inspired Sherif Ali's entrance in Lawrence of Arabia). Was that the first time it was done, the most iconic instance of it, or part of a common trend around then from several films?

The story meanders a bit, which I like more in theory than execution. The patience of the storytelling successfully conveys the length of the journey. It does feel like there should be a better way to convey how monotonous it the journey is though.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend