Working together for the 12th time; John Wayne and director John Ford forged The Searchers into an indelible image of the frontier and the men and women who challenged it. Wayne plays ex-Confederate soldier Ethan Edwards; a believer more in bullets than in words. He's seeking his niece; captured by Comanches who massacred his family. He won't surrender to hunger; thirst; the elements or loneliness. And in his obsessive; five-year quest; Ethan encounters something he didn't expect to find: his own humanity.