Should John Wayne Stay or Should He Go: The Angel and the Bad Man (1946)
For some reason- and you can call it the western fool inside of me- I thought that this movie would be about an actual angel (good guy) and a bad man (bad guy) squaring off in the old west and all that. I assumed for some reason that John Wayne’s character would be the angel and he would have to protect or save someone from the bad man for reasons that involve riding lots of horses and shooting at each other.
I was wrong. The angel is not John Wayne. The bad man is John Wayne. The angel is actually also a woman. John Wayne meets a woman in this movie and must decide if he wants to stay and settle down with her, and her somewhat ordinary way of life, or if he wants to go back out into the wild, wild west and be the bad man that he was before he met her.
This movie- while having some great action sequences- provides that ultimate question that anyone who has ever been in love or wants to be in love must face. It’s that whole idea of being free vs. settling down, though settling down doesn’t mean losing all of your freedom.
