I think this has to be without a doubt John Wayne's best movie. Rio Bravo really seemed to have the charm possessed in most John Wayne movies, the action was good, and there was even some comic relief. If you think The Searchers was a good movie - I would agree whole heartedly. I did not consider it a real "John Wayne" however, because he did not seem to play the same character role.
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this is objective.
I like THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE better.
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Undoubtedly John Wayne's best western is "Red River," certainly not the highly over-rated "The Searchers."
Kenneth Rorie
i could go with Rio bravo as being one his most entertaining. But I still think he was at it very best in The Searchers.
shareDear John Wayne fans--
You guys are all great. Re the topic (thread): JWs "Best Movie".
The Searchers could be best in the sense of having extra-ordinary cinematography: including colour co-ordination between the costumes and the scenery in which those costumes appear. Thus maybe Searchers is ranked so high because it is considered by many to be near the apex of "film-making." In addition Searchers has a typically great Max Steiner score. I suppose that's why there are so many Oscar categories prefixed by "best" ...
My favourite John Wayne movie is Big Jake-- I simply love that movie.
Another thought: our favourites depend to a large degree on the circumstances of our meeting them. Re movies: our age, the quality of the theater, and in some cases who we were with can affect our fondness for the film.
It may not be his best, but the John Wayne movie I love the most is THE COWBOYS.
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I never liked John Wayne movies where his character dies. Sorry.
sharethis can be endlessly disputed, I guess.
I think this was one of his weaker westerns - above McClintock, but below The Cowboys, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Shootist and True Grit, and way below The Searchers and Stagecoach.
And when ranking all his films I would list those same westerns, plus The Quiet Man.
just my own list.
If I missed it, sorry...but what about Hondo? Island in the Sky is also a little known, but very good Duke movie.
shareof course, it's a matter of taste.
I consider Island in the Sky a good movie, but Wayne's contribution only so-so.
same for Hondo.
On the other hand, I would add In Harm's Way to my list of his strongest movies, and The High and the Mighty to the middle rank.
Pittsburgh is predictable and star-driven (not actor-driven).
all these are my opinion and taste.
Exactly, a matter of taste. I wasn't trying to imply these were my favorites. It just seemed odd that with so many replies, the same titles kept coming up.
Island in the Sky is an ensemble movie, but I thought he anchored it well. My particular memory of it is when we almost see John Wayne break into tears (shudder) when the planes fly over and don't see them.
But Hondo is John Wayne's movie from start to finish...not sure how you can imply his contribution to it is so-so, unless you think it's a so-so movie. If so, you'd probably be in the minority on that one.
Funny, I was going to mention In Harm's Way...another good one.
"The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" will always be my favorite, I just love the chemistry between James Stewart and John Wayne. Expected something a bit more from "Rio Bravo".
shareThe Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a 10/10 movie any way you judge it. Such a superb film.
shareMy favourite Duke films are;
Quiet Man
Stagecoach
The Searchers
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Rio Bravo is a good JW western but not a great one IMO. I'm not usually one to complain about the pacing in his films, but things do get a little lackadaisical
midway through this and I think 10 to 15 minutes could have quite easily been excised from RB without disrupting the main narrative.
Favourite Duke films:
1 The Searchers
2 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence
3 True Grit/The Cowboys
It can be argued that Duke is just playing "John Wayne" in both RIO BRAVO and THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, but the former uses the John Wayne character in the service of pure entertainment, while John Ford in LIBERTY VALANCE uses the Wayne character to make a point, i.e., that for both better and worse, the taming of the West left little room for the kind of rugged individualism Wayne represents. Also, once Liberty Valance is killed, Tom Doniphon, the Wayne character, is also in a sense destroying his own world.
shareJohn Wayne was far more than playing "John Wayne" because he had true depth as an actor.
shareHe did. He does far more than just play John Wayne in stuff like THE QUIET MAN, TROUBLE ALONG THE WAY, ISLAND IN THE SKY, THE SEARCHERS, RED RIVER, THE COWBOYS, TRUE GRIT, and others. I just cited two movies where he was playing the image where it was put to different uses, one for entertainment, one to make a statement.
share I'm not a big True Grit fan and maybe it was in part due to the bad sequel. But a few titles I'd mention that were not would be Wake of Red Witch and Flying Tigers (I liked a younger, thinner, less cliched Duke).
I also thought the performance Otto Preminger dragged out of him in In Harms Way was better than his usual deal.
Kisskiss, Bangbang
"Favorite" film is entirely subjective. You could pick a truly terrible film as a favorite simply because you enjoy watching it, and that's fair. "Best" film is something else and requires some objectivity.
It's a very tough call, but in my opinion Wayne's "best" film is Red River, for its overall qualities as well as what I think is his best performance. A very close second is They Were Expendable, though in that case the film's greatness has much less to do with Wayne than its all-around excellence. But I can easily understand others disagreeing with these choices.
"Favorites" for me would include, in chronological order, Stagecoach, Dark Command, Reap the Wild Wind, They Were Expendable, Red River, Big Jim McLain, The High and the Mighty, Blood Alley, Rio Bravo, The Comancheros, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, In Harm's Way, Brannigan. This list isn't exhaustive and is certainly not intended to be Wayne's "best" films: Big Jim McLain is pretty dopey and entirely dishonest in its defense and description of HUAC, but is for those reasons highly entertaining to me -- as well as an important indicator of Wayne's politics. He made many other films I like and are better than some of my favorites -- The Big Trail, The Long Voyage Home, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Shootist and several more -- but I don't enjoy these quite as much as some others. I even like The Barbarian and the Geisha, which Wayne hated, but it's really not bad at all and is at least something different for him.
Wayne's most overrated film to me is unquestionably The Searchers. Not bad, but overrated. It has periods of greatness and beauty and Wayne is good, but these attributes are fatally marred by John Ford's insistence on sticking in his heavy-handed, lame-brained "boys-will-be-boys" horseplay "humor" throughout the picture, mainly in the characters of Ward Bond and especially Ken Curtis. It's all forced, unnatural and decidedly unfunny. (Henry Fonda broke with Ford over Mister Roberts precisely because of Ford's penchant at this stage of his career for jamming such inept stupidity into that movie, and this was a characteristic of most of Ford's films from the late 40s on.) Yet even all that aside, the way so many people rave about the film leaves me mystified, and I've watched it 20 times at least over the years. It's good, but those who call it the greatest film ever made -- and there are people, including some critics, who do just that -- are insanely off base as far as I'm concerned.
But while Rio Bravo may not be John Wayne's "best" film, for me, it's absolutely my favorite of them all.
I like El Dorado and The Searchers.
shareIt's my favorite...but The Searchers is one of the greatest movies of all time, imo, so it goes without saying that it's got to be his best.
That being said, Searchers, True Grit and The Shootist I think are among his best.
I can't agree that this is anywhere near the best John Wayne movie, Rio Bravo IMO is basically a guilty pleasure movie, not much different than the cowboy shoot em ups kids liked in the 50's and 60's. Its strictly entertaining complete with songs, fancy shoot em ups, and big actors. And the shootout at the end is laughably unrealistic. This does not have any of the deeper elements of The Searchers, True Grit, The Cowboys, or The Shootist. I honestly think El Dorado which had a similar plotline was a superior film.
shareI didn't say it was his best. Unless you were replying to someone else?
share