Many believe “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” to be John Ford’s greatest film. It’s somewhat of a farewell letter to a way of life that has faded into history...

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 2, 2023

The finale gives you so much to chew on in the way of deconstruction of Western myths and the eternal conflict between anarchism and civilized society...

| Original Score: B- | Feb 3, 2023

... A pensive yet ripely entertaining film — proof that he [John Ford] was himself one of his country’s great myth-makers.

| Sep 26, 2022

Perhaps John Ford's most layered and haunting Western, boasting one of John Wayne's most despicable characters and a decidedly nonstandard approach to the genre more concerned with speechifyin' than shootouts.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 8, 2022

One of the most beloved Westerns ever made. This is due to many reasons – story, cast, direction, etc.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 29, 2022

As The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance marks its 60th anniversary, it is a defining Western and the best of John Ford's later career.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 17, 2022

John Ford regularly made such clear-eyed, unsentimental assessments of the Old West and the lies that forged its mythology that one may wonder how the concept of a “revisionist western” ever took root when the original was already so bleak.

| May 16, 2022

Merely one of the greatest Westerns ever made.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 30, 2021

"A masterpiece". [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 31, 2020

Long before Watergate-era cynicism about the media set in, we were told with a wink by perhaps the West's principal mythologist to be skeptical about everything we had been told.

| Jul 23, 2020

Hence, contrary to expectations of realist films, this western stands out for how comprehensive a town and a world it manages to build around its central event.

| Jul 1, 2020

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) was another nostalgic and memorable B/W John Ford-directed film about the passing of the Old West and the rise of civilization - it was his last great film.

| Original Score: A+ | Sep 29, 2019

With all the Ford requirements and the Ford mystique, including John Wayne and James Stewart off- setting each other's archetypal physiques, presences, worlds and implications; and Edmond O'Brien, at his uproariest.

| Jul 31, 2019

It is often sentimental and stagy, but it is rarely boring... The screenplay is just the fable Mr. Ford needed for his farewell to the Western.

| Jul 31, 2019

A solid, if overrated, Ford western, one with its share of cliches and predictability. It's still fascinating to watch Wayne and Stewart deal with hellion Marvin in a changing West.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 29, 2013

John Ford's last great film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is also one of the last classic Westerns to come out of Hollywood.

| Apr 29, 2013

There's much to say about it; the simplest is that it's both the most romantic of Westerns and the greatest American political movie.

| Apr 29, 2013

The Citizen Kane of westerns.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 29, 2013

There is a purity to the John Ford style. His composition is classical. He arranges his characters within the frame to reflect power dynamics -- or sometimes to suggest a balance is changing.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 30, 2011

The best film about bullying ever made.

| Dec 9, 2010