What often sets a John Wayne movie apart from your average oater is that there’s often a twist to the tale that you don’t find in the usual western flick. Here, it’s about Wayne’s morally ambiguous cowpoke falling in with a family of Quakers. The setup gives the story a base layer of philosophizing in its narrative, which provides a sense of something different and intriguing to what would otherwise be a run-of-the-mill story. Wayne provides his standard self as the reluctant good guy, while costar Gail Russell is charming throughout as his mildly naïve but otherwise patient and wise would be love interest. Don’t worry—the romance only partly gets in the way of familiar horse opera tropes, such as galloping mounts, guns, grand vistas, cattle rustling, outbursts of violence, etc. Mostly, this work is about a mood, a friendly (pun intended) charm that wins you over and leaves you grinning through much of the running time. It’s a film worth watching, I tell thee true.
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