While most reviews were favorable, some critics expressed their dislike of "The Searchers." Most who did either complained that the movie was confusing or that they felt John Ford had made one too many Westerns. ("What none of the critics, positive or negative, grasped was that 'The Searchers' was a different kind of Western," Frankel notes). Variety called the movie "overlong and repetitious," with "subtleties in the basically simple story that are not adequately explained." Time magazine said Ford's Westerns were "too practiced and familiar.... Even John Wayne seems to have done it once too often as he makes his standardized end-of-film departure into the sunset" and said the movie itself had "lapses of logic and responsible behavior."
