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The Searchers
Directed by
John Ford
Not Rated
1956
1h 59m
Western
,
Drama
,
and more
7.8
87%
88%
Add to Watchlist
An American Civil War veteran embarks on a years-long journey to rescue his niece from the Comanches after the rest of his brother's family is massacred in a raid on their Texas farm.
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Where to Watch The Searchers
Amazon Video
Buy $12.99
Rent $3.79
Apple TV
Buy $12.99
Rent $3.99
Fandango At Home
Buy $12.99
Rent $3.99
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Cast of The Searchers
John Wayne
Ethan Edwards
Jeffrey Hunter
Martin Pawley
Vera Miles
Laurie Jorgensen
Ward Bond
Rev. Capt. Samuel Johnston Clayton
Natalie Wood
Debbie Edwards
John Qualen
Lars Jorgensen
Olive Carey
Mrs. Jorgensen
Henry Brandon
Chief Cicatriz (Scar)
Ken Curtis
Charlie McCorry
Harry Carey, Jr.
Brad Jorgensen
Antonio Moreno
Emilio Gabriel Fernandez y Figueroa
Hank Worden
Mose Harper
Beulah Archuletta
Look
Walter Coy
Aaron Edwards
Dorothy Jordan
Martha Edwards
Pippa Scott
Lucy Edwards
Patrick Wayne
Lt. Greenhill
Lana Wood
Younger Debbie Edwards
Mae Marsh
Dark Cloaked Woman at Fort Guarding Deranged Woman (uncredited)
Ruth Clifford
Deranged Woman at Fort (uncredited)
Chuck Roberson
Ranger at Wedding (uncredited)
Chuck Hayward
Man at Wedding (uncredited)
Peter Mamakos
Jerem Futterman (uncredited)
Frank McGrath
Texas Ranger (uncredited)
Jack Pennick
Sergeant at Fort (uncredited)
Terry Wilson
Texas Ranger (uncredited)
The Searchers Ratings & Reviews
New York Times
Bosley Crowther
A rip-snorting Western, as brashly entertaining as they come.
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
[The Searchers is] Ford's greatest western, with John Wayne as the relentless adventurer Ethan Edwards.
Austin Chronicle
Louis Black
Damn, this is Wayne's movie.
Decent Films
Steven D. Greydanus
The Searchers's reputation is so widely accepted that it's a surprise to discover that the film, and Wayne's character, are more complex than the reputation suggests.
Chicago Reader
Dave Kehr
Through the central image of the frontier, the meeting point of wilderness and civilization, 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
The Dissolve
Tasha Robinson
It's an endlessly surprising film, in large part because it starts out feeling like such a standard Hollywood Western... But then the film diverges from the expected action-rescue-revenge plot, and becomes bigger, wider, and sadder.
Variety
Ronald Holloway
Some fine vignettes of frontier life in the early southwest and a realistic presentation of the difficulties faced by the settlers in carving out a homestead in dangerous Indian country.
The New Yorker
Pauline Kael
You can read a lot into it, but it isn't very enjoyable. The lines are often awkward and the line readings worse, and the film is often static, despite economic, quick editing.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Elston Brooks
Wayne, always at home in the saddle, makes a fine bounceback from his embarrassing performance in The Conqueror. Hunter carries the picture well on those occasions when it's handed to him.
Newsweek
Newsweek Staff
Despite scene after scene of frustrated pursuit... Ford never ignores the great cinematic necessity, pace.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Myles Standish
The combination of Director John Ford and star John Wayne has again produced a crack Western, the best since Shane, in The Searchers.
Orlando Sentinel
Jean Yothers
The story is appealing, the action is exciting and the expanse of scenery in VistaVision and Technicolor is truly awe-inspiring.
TIME Magazine
TIME Staff
The lapses in logic and the general air of incoherence are only minor imperfections in a film as carefully contrived as a matchstick castle.
Detroit Free Press
Helen Bower
Ford has achieved an extraordinary effect. There is the sense of time passing, yet the picture never drags. There is continued action, yet the picture conveys in almost leisurely fashion the life of isolated families in the remote early West.
Washington Post
Richard L. Coe
The Searchers, wherein Director John Ford again visits Arizona's Monument Valley, seeks but never completely captures an epic sweep. Frank Nugent's screen play... somehow fails to be consistently interesting.
The Hollywood Reporter
Jack Moffitt
[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.
Los Angeles Times
Edwin Schallert
While Ford has often probed the West for his dramas and his rare scenic panoramas, he seems in The Searchers to have penetrated more deeply than usual into life on the frontier.
New York Daily News
Kate Cameron
The Searchers is a gripping bit of Americana that should appeal to all movie-goers.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Mildred Martin
Visually beautiful, pretentious, dramatically wandering and downright dull.
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Contains scenes of magnificence, and one of John Wayne's best performances.
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