trampoline

Far above average costuming, set and art direction. Much of the Gunsmoke/TV sanitizing left out of production code. Cinematography above board and some decent acting.

John Ford's The Searchers is perhaps American cinema's greatest western. Sergio Leone made truly spectacular westerns, full of epic scenes and magnificent characters, but Ford captures the utter brutality of the Indian conflicts and the shear expanse of the American west on film like no other. John Wayne, in arguably his greatest role, masters the multi-layered Ethan Edwards, a role left shamelessly off of the AFI's best heroes/villains list. Edwards returns to the far west after the Civil War to visit his brothers family. Tired and begrudged, he wishes to find a place in the newly settled land full of warring Indians and empty of lawmen. Wayne's character takes many forms throughout this cinematic journey. He is mentor, racist, protector, teacher, and warrior. He contrasts splendidly with the film's true virtuous form, woman. For it is the female that is held in the highest regard in this picture. She fittingly represents life. Ford frames her in the home where she cooks, teaches, clothes and longs for a civil order that includes marriage and children. The American Indian strives for this same cultural order, but he treats women as property. It is this duplicity, the treatment of women by the different cultures, that the male characters find difficult to reconcile. While Skar, the Indian war chief who Ethan Edwards pursues throughout the film, brutally kills white settlers and kidnaps young white females, it is Ethan who wishes to steal his niece back and kill her, thus denying her any true worth.

Jeff Hunter and Ward Bond are also splendid in this film. Each represents a different type of frontier man. Hunter's Marty is a orphan of the open range, he rides bareback and sleeps under the stars like a coyote. Yet, he cannot escape his human virtues, instilled by Martha, his adoptive mother. Bond is perfect as the calvary officer and minister rolled into one. His reconciles his peaceful duties with his law-keeping ones in order to preserve some civil order, such as marriage, in the American western frontier. Once again, each character longs to protect the female form and her role in society. This remains the classic conflict in the film: white man's struggle to civilize the frontier and the "savages" struggle to keep it free and untamed.

The Searchers survives as the greatest western for the depth that Ford captures in its scenery and within its plot. John Ford is an American cinematic master. This film gets a lot of play on television. Don't miss it.

I was excited to see beautifully vibrant, Oscar-nominated Naomi Watts and the brooding, statuesque Viggo Mortensen teamed in a mobster film. Watts plays Anna a midwife who nurses a pregnant waif cast off by west London society. Mortensen is a chauffeur and mafia wiseguy with a reserved, introspective manner. But, this movie falls very short in character and plot development; I was disappointed that the kind yet tortured Anna would be so tolerated by such wicked Russian henchmen. Like mafioso films past and present, there are obvious parallels being drawn between "family-oriented" American organized crime and the Russian mafia, but this film's European-Russian community seems too deeply rooted in crime with very few honest hard-working people. It seems all Russian activity, no matter how civil, is immersed in mob influence. However, the omnipotently manipulative don cant quite detect his son's weaknesses and the fact that he is a homosexual. Anna is, of course, the gallant heroine trying desperately to connect the child with her true bloodlines. Yet her tragic past seems but a novelty in this story. Why shouldn't she allow the child to be adopted? Why thrust the child back into the world she just escaped? Viggo Mortensen plays the dutiful mobster soldier quite well; his screen presence is always substantial, especially when its a brooding, introspective type much like his turn in The Hunt for Red October. However, Nikolai's ascension to captain in the mob-family comes off as forced and unlikely. Transcending the family connection might take much more time and sophistication. Overall, the film held me with bits of revelation and some well choreographed violence. But, I cant help feeling that Eastern Promises should have delivered more.