Definitely one of my favorites of Wayne's 'other' films

With John Wayne, there are certainly those films that always come up, and then there's the "middle of the road" movies, then movies that are thought to be generally lackluster, and finally there's his B-movies before he became a star that probably only the most die-hard Wayne fan would see.

Stagecoach, Rio Bravo, True Grit, The Searchers, Red River, other Ford/Wayne collaborations, a few non-westerns you could say like The Quiet Man and The Sands of Iwo Jima, a fan of big action epics might say The Alamo.

But The Sons of Katie Elder is never really mentioned in that category, at least not by many. For my money, it definitely deserves more recognition. It isn't quite The Searchers or Rio Bravo, that's true, its a simple, elegant movie that's very well-made. I found the action scenes to be very memorable, and it was very interesting to see how the character of Katie Elder was used throughout the movie and you could feel her influence everywhere.

So far this is still a top 10 Wayne movie for me.