The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
1962
🎯 Verdict
✍️ Full Review
Now, this is a western I could definitely get behind. The speciality of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was in its subversive abilities of shattering the vintage myths and legends surrounding the cowboy who would often be a lone wolf acting on behalf of justice as he rides into the sunset. This one brings home the American Dream and the principles written by the forefathers on a piece of paper, as the lawless Wild West gets tamed with law and order, education and of course all these expediently fast-tracked by the railroads. John Wayne to his reputation does hang his hat his own usual ways on this own terms but plays a balancing act by brilliantly passing the torch, metaphorically speaking, to the next batch but in a rather remarkably heroic way. Cactus rose against a real rose. In a movie that starred John Wayne, James Stewart, Vera Miles and Lee Marvin, strangely enough Edmund O'Brien playing Mr. Peabody certainly takes over the screen and plays a bridge between the east coast and the western desert with his humorous antics as well as his serious sophisticated erudite nature of his verbose. Not just that, in the most iconic manner, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance enacts these inclusive and progressive themes of twenty first century modern common sense along with the fundamentals associated with the liberal and democratic values of the American Dream very effectively, not just through sheer emotions but in an analytical manner. John Ford's classic does justice to both; the legends around the gun-totting style of the Spaghetti Western as it was fading from the pages and the screens and the upcoming wave of cinema that was going to lean heavily towards critical thinking pointing to modern socio-political issues of the 60s and 70s.