Rio Bravo

Just a perfect film.

I love the story that Tarantino shows this to potential girlfriends to see if he will date them or not depending on their reaction.

I can't even count how many times I have seen this movie. Love the bar scene and Dean Martin's redemption. Just a great damn film.

I'm probably gonna be looking over my internet shoulder for a good long while after saying this, but I've never seen it. Was never big on westerns and though I heard lots about it, I never really tried to seek it out.

Jarvie, you really should check it out. Such a great, enjoyable movie that could be dropped into a lot of genres, it just happens to be a western. And probably a perfectly filmed pop movie if there ever was one.

Whenever anyone talks shit about John Wayne as an actor, I point them to this movie and THE QUIET MAN. Say what you want about his politics, but if any of the current stable of action stars could act with the range and subtlety of Wayne in this movie, we wouldn't be bitching about the state of Hollywood quite so much.

There will never be a time I will turn down watching Rio Bravo. It's one of the first westerns I remember watching as a kid and still the one I love the most. Everyone is the best they've ever been in this movie.

Walter Brennan, God bless. Movie's not-so-secret weapon. One of the funniest non-comedy performances ever.

'That's what I got'.

An absolute classic, and one one my top five westerns, and I always felt there is more depth in Wayne's role here than in any other movie he did bar The Searchers.

Expect Dellamorte to come in and school us a little more on why this is so great.

Its a perfect film and I also love John Carpenter's AOP13 which was heavily inspired by Rio Bravo.

Been meaning to pickup the bluray.

A perfect introduction to Wayne and to Westerns. It comes just late enough to encapsulate what made the first 50 years of the genre (and the first 30 years of Wayne's career) great, and just early enough to anticipate the revisionism of the '60s.

Also, it's got Angie Dickinson in what is basically a rewrite of Lauren Bacall's role from To Have and Have Not, and damned if she doesn't do a better job of it.

Wasn't this the movie Hawks made as a fuck you to High Noon?

That's what Hawks said in interviews. I'm not sure how true it really is.

Well, yes it is, the basic concept is that in HIGH NOON the main character spends the whole time asking for help and not needing it, and in RIO BRAVO the character spends the whole time telling people not to help him, and then needing it desperately.

I don't know about that television stuff, Hawks may have just been talking out his ass, or reflecting on the over-saturation of the Western. Two things really killed the genre: television, and that era no longer being our not-too distant past. Also, the R rating, and Sam Peckinpah, and the cultural shift of cinema in the 70's to different interests.

Thinking about it, I would kill for Scorsese to make a western, even though TAXI DRIVER is a redress of THE SEARCHERS.

The cultural divide between Ford and Hawks, and I think you have to prefer one, is that Hawks valued language over Ford's visuals. You can't find too many better filmmakers (to quote the film "I'd hate to live on the difference"), but as a writer, I tend to lean toward Hawks, though I don't know if you can take frames away from RIO BRAVO and say "This is Hawks" like you can a Ford film. Perhaps because Hawks imagery was never really stolen, per se, excepting people lifting of the X/Death motif from Scarface.

Rio Bravo may not be the greatest film ever made, but you go all desert island on my ass I know what's first on my list.

Hawks basically remade this picture as El Dorado, with Robert Mitchum playing reluctant deputy to John Wayne.

It, too, is a great picture if for no other reason than that if you could imagine anyone actually kicking Wayne's ass, it'd be Mitchum.

I love this movie, it's a completely different kind of western and I love Dean Martin's performance. It's an effortlessly relaxed film despite the setting and story, makes Wes Anderson movies look like Hitchcock thrillers.

And yes, the High Noon story is true, both Hawks and Wayne hated that film for the exact reason dre mentions. I think this is even mentioned on the dvd commentary with John Carpenter.

Angie Dickinson is so batshit insane in this movie. It's great. I don't know if she's just coming off of an extended stay on the opium pipe, or if she's just a natural female, but she's adorable and absolutely loony at the same time. The Duke's reaction to her is perfect, and I totally sympathize, one moment completely flustered, the next swooning. Well, I don't think John Chance ever swoons, but you get the point.

It's just the little things John Wayne does here that makes me love his performance so much. That kiss on the head to Stumpy, his quiet appreciation of the song in the middle of the movie, his flustered nature with Angie Dickinson, and the way he works with Dean Martin - he loves and respects Dude so much that it almost physically hurts him to see Dude brought low - it's almost completely opposite the way Wayne's been portrayed in films.

"Sorry don't get it done, Dude. That's the second time you hit me. Don't ever do it again."

The Duke's delivery here is hard to top. It's the pure unadulterated voice of moral authority.

I keep coming back to his arguments with Dickinson: Wayne was an underrated romantic comedian, and his reading of "I'M NOT MAD" is deceptively effortless. And who doesn't fall in love with Feathers when she sets up to guard his bedroom door?

Regarding TV, one story goes that Hawks had to ride Brennan to drop the acting habits he'd developed on The Real McCoys.

I find Angie Dickinson extremely sexy in this. And I think a lot of that is the crazy she exudes in this one.

I haven't seen this in nearly a decade, but damned if not going to throw this in the DVD player this weekend. Thanks, thread!

John Wayne called High Noon "the most unamerican thing I've ever seen"; always thought that should be on that movie's DVD cover in bold fucking letters, it'd be Corman-level marketing genius. At any rate, if Hawks and Wayne had succeeded in making this a riposte to that movie, it'd probably have ended up as a pretty dumb film - it would have had to feature a lone hero kicking everyone's ass. But as Andre points out, colaboration is why the heroes win in Rio Bravo, so the moral ends up being something like "you need help to survive but it's unseemly to ask", which is a gloriously childish old style macho theory, but defuses its supposed political intent. And HUZZAH for that, really.

All the women leads in Hawks movies are always crazy. I fall for every last one.

I don't know if they're crazy, so much as self-possessed and into fucking.

I thought Mitchum was the sheriff and Wayne was just his buddy. With James Cann filling in for Ricky Nelson.

Yeah, Mitchum's the sheriff, Wayne pops in to town, and James Caan throws knives.

Ah, you're right. Nevertheless, Hawks did describe it as a remake.

It basically is. We dare not question you, Mr. Cobretti!

I like the story Hawks told about pitching Rio Lobo to Wayne: "Do I get to play the drunk in this one?"

And does an incredibly out-of-place impression of a Chinese person to create a "diversion".

I love both of them, but Rio Bravo easily wins out.

Walter Brennan was awesome as Stumpy. That is all.

I use his "Why don't nobody tell me nothin'?" all the time.

I've never been much into westerns. The three exceptions are Texas Across the River (though nostalgia probably plays into that one), The Searchers, and this one.

It's just so relentlessly entertaining, and it stands as a nice counterpoint to the fatalism that permeates a lot of the high quality westerns.

It does get pretty intense though, with the deguello stuff (which invented Morricone dontchaknow)

I love that part of the movie. So damn good.

Man, I just eyed this one at the library the other day. I've never seen this, but remember catching RIO LOBO on TV a number of times and loving the shit out of it.

I'll see about checking it out next time I'm there. I'm not a die-hard Western fan, but I like well done ones, and agree that Wayne's underappreciated as an actor and comedian.

(I know it's completely lightweight, but I love MCLINTOCK! That or QUIET MAN represents my favorite Wayne movie.)

Revisited this one recently. Effortless. I love how it can go from super serious to a buddy comedy to suspenseful to romantic...

I know it isn't some grand risky statement to make but this might be the most entertaining film ever. It has it all. Action, drama, comedy, songs all wrapped in a script as tight as a drum or [insert your own inappropriate metaphor here].

Coincidentally, I just saw this movie for the first time this past weekend. As you probably don't recall, I'm the guy who disgusted certain curmudgeons on this forum a few months ago by listing all the westerns I've watched over the years that I've been disappointed by in my quest to see every historically significant movie ever made. Having watched the dollars trilogy, "High Noon", and this movie recently, I am slowly starting to feel more positively towards this genre. Still, I generally feel like most Westerns are too long and this one is no exception. They always have standout action sequences and good performances that keep them from ever becoming boring to the point where I want to give up, but at the same time, I still believe they're all too slowly paced. The incredibly glacial pace of "Once Upon A Time In the West" drove me nuts, but at least the epically gripping stare down/shootout at the end gave the thing a satisfying pay-off. 

 

I had some frustration over pacing and running time with "Rio Bravo" too, but in the end I felt it had enough highlights and strong characters to be worth watching overall. Stumpy's voice really got on my nerves at times. I'm pretty sure he's the inspiration for the stereotypical redneck hick voices Hank Azaria and/or Dan Castellaneta loved to do on "The Simpsons". The voice is funny for 30 second gags, but grows tiresome and grating over the entire duration of a long movie. On the other hand, he had a lot of hilarious moments, like his laugh after he accidentally shoots a hole in the Dean Martin character's hat, so I could never dislike him for too long. My two favourite moments were the duet between Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson and the truly inspired use of dynamite at the end. Damn, that was such a cool idea. It was sort of like Pyro lighting the cars Magneto hurled at the end of "X-Men: The Last Stand" except, you know...a million times more awesome (and plausible).

 

I realize the Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson thing was sort of a blatant excuse to show off their musical talents, but it still felt natural. A nice mellow scene for the characters to chill out in before the big showdown. And I second the love for Angie Dickenson's character. One thing that's been disappointing me about westerns has been the lack of strong female characters and I think she's the best I've seen so far. I love her dialogue with John Wayne while she's wearing her lingerie. Their scenes together where she's flirting with him are so fascinating. It was such a pleasure to watch the way she would try to get him to admit that he's attracted to her. Even though he'd try hard to avoid saying anything overtly affectionate, eventually his words reveal that he really has come to care for her...in a very manly and terse way, of course. 

Watched EL DORADO recently. It is a remake for the most part. Characters names are different, but circumstances are basically the same. Some scenes play out VERY similar (thinking of Deano's/Mitchum's withdrawal and walking through the front door of the saloon for redemption) I think what EL DORADO excels at where RIO BRAVO skimped on was putting faces to the villains and town victims in the story. McCleod is more memorable than any villain in RB really. Course, I enjoy RB more, due to the tone, palpable comradery, and more focused and fleshed out female lead, amongst other things.

 

It's interesting to note that despite the Duke switching rolls, his character remains mostly the same. He's the nucleus of the group. The constant.

 

I'm not sure how I feel about Caan as the inexperienced novice. I like that he has more backstory and character tags (knife & hat), but I really like the confident and surprisingly cool rookie that Nelson plays. Both have strengths. Walter Brennan's Stumpy is surely missed by me. And I also think RB's dialogue has a bit more snap to it when compared to EL DORADO.