For some reason I thought you'd seen it. All I can say is keep an open mind. Like all of Ford Westerns, it's an origin story, but not about iconic figures (Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday) or events (the gunfight at the O.K Corral) but for an idea of America. So the underlying politics inevitably rub some the wrong way (I'm sure every NRA member has this on their shelf) but a more open mind will hopefully see beyond all that. For me it's the film where Ford proved that a lowly genre film could be the platform for a kind of cinema every bit as intelligent and visually beautiful as anything that was coming out of Europe.
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