"Shane! Shane! Come back, Shane!"

This is sad. It's 10:30AM and I've finished my 2nd movie of the day. To be honest, I started my first movie (Shooter, see my last post) yesterday, but none the less, I woke up early to drive my wife to the airport, and then ended up finishing 2 movies before noon! Sad.

Since I just started this blog, I'm kind of pumped about posting, so anyway, here is my short review of the movie I just finished, and old western called Shane.

It was pretty darn good. Made in the early 50's, Shane is a nice movie set in Alabama after the Civil War took place and farmers are laying claim to their land. The story focuses on a family and a mysterious man named Shane who band together along with their neighbors to fight a man who has taken the liberty of oppressing the settlers. Anyway, enough of a plot synopsis, you can read it on your own at imdb or Wikipedia. I'm a sucker for old movies, they really seem to captivate me (as long as they were done well). The lead actors really were very believeable, the only person that was a little annoying was the young boy Joey. None the less, the story was classic, the movie was inspiring and the execution of the film was very good. It seemed to have been nominated for 6 Academy Awards, only winning best Cinematography for color films. Also, I only recognized on of the actors (I'm working on broadening my knowledge of pre 1970's actors) and that was Jack Palance. He played "Curly" in the City Slickers movies! The film's score was very good, turns out the composer (Victor Young) was nominated for 22 Oscars and he only won one posthumously.

Any who, I found out about this film through the AFI Top 100 Movies list and it rightly deserves to be there.
I give Shane 4.5/5 cowboy hats and think anyone who's interested in classic Westerns should check it out, it's a very believeable and touching story.