BrianKoller's Full Review: Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
When I was a kid I would hear the "The Man who Shot Liberty Valance" on the radio. The song that is, which was a hit for mawkish singer Gene Pitney. There were lyrics somewhat like "When Liberty Valance strode the town, the folks would step aside, they'd hide". So bad it was good, the song has always made me look forward to seeing the movie and the bad guy Liberty Valance.
Well, the song wasn't in the movie, and Valance
turned out to be Lee Marvin, creating the
stumbling, wild-eyed, cartoonish character put to
better use in "Ship of Fools" and "Cat Ballou".
Director John Ford assembles a stellar cast, but
like Marvin, the actors are given somewhat
stereotypical characters familiar from previous
roles. John Wayne is a good-guy rancher, handy
with a gun ("Red River"), Jimmy Stewart is the
new man in town, out of place and unwilling to
use a gun ("Destry Rides Again"), Andy Devine is
a comic relief character, the only man able to
talk off-key ("Stagecoach"), Vera Miles is the
headstrong, beautiful woman torn between two men
("The Searchers"), Edmond O'Brien is the drunken
yellow journalist (help me fill in the blank
here, folks). Fortunately, Ford is such a
masterful storyteller that the film can partly
overcome the conventional characters.
The story begins with an elderly Stewart and
Miles arriving in a sleepy Western town to attend
the funeral of a nobody. When a nosy reporter
asks why, Stewart obliges. The film becomes a
flashback. Stewart arrives from the East, and
plans to establish himself as a lawyer in the
town. Since he is pro-statehood, he becomes the
enemy of Liberty Valance, a crazy, mean-spirited
man with two sadistic sidekicks. Valance is in
cahoots with greedy ranchers who oppose
statehood. Aiding Stewart is the one-man
newspaper firm O'Brien. Stewart is also
befriended by good-guy, tough-guy Wayne, whose
gal is Miles. Miles and Stewart work together in
the kitchen of a restaurant, where they
frequently exchange meaningful glances. A
showdown between gunslinger Marvin and the
ungainly, inexperienced Stewart is inevitable.
Although the film is over two hours long, there
are only a few slow moments. Miles leads some
cute schoolkids in their recital of the alphabet,
while Maxwell Scott has failed to memorize the
Declaration of Independence (ironic that he
stumbles on the phrase "All men are created
equal"). Since lauded as a great film, "The Man
who Shot Liberty Valance" is a good but
conventional Western that has become somewhat
over-rated due to its famous cast and director.
(65/100)
In John Ford's stark melancholy swan song for the conventional frontier Western aged Senator Ransom Stoddard James Stewart returns to the small town o...More at Family Video
This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. Behind the camera? John Ford, a director whose name is synonymous with Westerns...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
DVDS. In John Ford's stark, melancholy swan song for the conventional frontier Western, aged Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) returns to the sm...More at DeepDiscount.com
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2010 Shopping.com, Inc.