Next up on the extended S&S list is a friggin’ John Wayne cowboy movie at #108, ughhhhhh. But when I’m watching off a list, I don’t let myself skip things, as that’s kinda the whole point. So, with great reluctance, it was once more into the cowboy breach for me. But here’s the shocking twist: This movie is actually really good.

The key is, it’s not so much a John Wayne movie as it is a Jimmy Stewart movie. Because Jimmy Stewart is a lawyer come to a western frontier town, with a strong sense that law and order (here seen as liberal ideals against the alternative of “fastest gun makes the rules”) should be brought to the frontier. John Wayne, meanwhile, is the fastest gun, and kinda likes the way things are.

But both of them are fundamentally good guys, and they’re both opposed to Liberty Valance, a thug and a bully who’s doing the bidding of the cattle ranchers to try to keep the law from ever arriving in the territory, fighting against statehood and farmers and townsfolk. The core of the movie is Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne having a difference of opinion about how to fight against men like Liberty Valance — with laws or with guns. Given the title, it’s not surprising that there’s a way in which Wayne’s pro-violence argument wins out, but… well, there’s a twist there, too.

The movie is framed up as a flashback, with an elderly Jimmy Stewart coming to (a now-civilized) town as a respected US Senator to bury a man who’s been forgotten, so there’s a way in which the movie is a eulogy not just for John Wayne’s character, but for the lawless frontier — and maybe even to some extent, to the movie western. Despite being in black and white, this is a movie from 1962, in the twilight of director John Ford’s career, and his final western with John Wayne.

I’m not a fan of westerns, but this one I like. It doesn’t have the incredible vistas of The Searchers (it was shot almost entirely on a studio lot with a low budget), but in every other way, it’s the superior film and maybe the best movie in this genre.