Shane

A man has to be what he is Joey, can't break the mould. Shane is a weary gunslinger, one day he happens upon a homesteader family and begins to do chores for them, he finds an inner peace that he long thought was behind him. Sadly his peace is short lived because a strong arm cattle baron is determined to drive all the small farmer families off their land, and Shane finds himself drawn into the escalating conflict. Taken from Jack Schaefer's popular novel, Shane holds up today as one of the most popular revered Westerns because it has mass appeal to the watching public. The main plot strand…

I first watched this movie decades ago, probably when I was I’m my teens, and possibly when I was spending some summer vacation time with my grandparents, who seemingly were always watching western shows. I read my first Zane Grey western, Riders of the Purple Sage, in that old house. I am not a student of film history, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this 50s era movie came to be a template of sorts for westerns. Our hero is by no means an anti-hero like Eastward’s Man with No Name, but he does plays things close to the vest early on in his attempt to leave his past behind. The…