Movie Night: ****Hondo, John Wayne

Hondo

This is a John Wayne from 1953 and is available through Instant Netflix.  This is a very enjoyable movie. Geraldine Page is the costar.  She as Angie Lowe has been abandoned by her husband and lives with her son in Indian Territory.  She is confident she will not have trouble, but the Apache are on the war path due to broken treaties.  However she is right, the Apache mean her no harm, but only because the Apache chief befriends her son, who reminds him in spirit of his own sons who have been killed, and who he adopts as a son.  Hondo (Wayne)  had visited the ranch, carrying dispatches for the army.  He leaves the army and goes back to make sure she is OK.  Meanwhile Hondo is bushwhacked by her husband, how is killed by Hondo.  A love interest develops between the two.  She tells the chief Hondo is her husband, saving his life from the Apache.   How can he love a woman, after he has killed her husband?  What price should you pay for happiness?  This story gets more intense when the chief is killed, and then the Apache no longer hold her and her son in favor.  The only complaint may be the number of violent deaths, mostly of Native Americans.