Review of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) by David L — 25 Sep 2017

I always love James Stewart in any leading role, so it was a treat to see him in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I like that he was playing the straight-laced lawyer who wasn?t the type to fit in amongst all the rough frontier folks. And it made sense that over time his charm and honest nature won over the townspeople. John Wayne offers a great contrast to Stewart, and I was surprised how well they played off one another. I wasn?t the biggest fan of John Wayne going into this movie, but I thought he perfectly fit this role. And they are just the two leads but there were also good performances from the supporting people including Vera Miles, Andy Devine, and especially Lee Marvin.

I?m not exactly an expert in the Western genre, but I could basically predict what was going to happen from one scene to the next in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It latches onto a number of familiar plot devices, although I?m willing to bet this movie did it first, I just know it from derivative stories. And that?s not to suggest anything that this movie does is bad or uninteresting. I get quite involved in stories like this, because we have such a clear-cut villain against admirable protagonists. I like the way the story is laid out, and even the framing device works for me, because it somehow adds emotional weight to the end of the story after we know all that happened before.

There was a romance subplot as well in the film, that could have been a pointless distraction, but I didn?t mind because of how well it was handled. Most of it was understated as they trusted the viewer to know what was actually going on. I thought it was intelligent storytelling and that?s not something you get all the time, especially not nowadays. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a film that one could easily pigeonhole into the genre of Western, which has never been my favorite, but it has elements of a character drama and even feels a little like a biopic (that?s how realistic they made it all seem.) There were some small elements that didn?t click for me in this film, but in general I loved it.