Red River (1948)

Touches You

Pretty Good

Absolutely Fantastic

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Top 10 best western movies of all time?! Nope. In my opinion, just an average movie. After Hawks' "Bringing Up Baby", "His Girl Friday", "Scarface", "The Big Sleep"... this comes pretty much as disappointment. :(6/10

Most people are going to enjoy this film. The story builds up well with some wonderful action set-pieces and montages, even though it could certainly benefit from further trimming. Coleen Gray making too much of her one scene would be twice as effective at half the length; and as for Joanne Dru, she doesn't belong in the film at all. True, she makes an extremely late entrance, but the story got along quite effectively without her. All she does is to slow down the pace and dissipate most of the tension. Mind you, the plot has some gaping holes. For instance, Wayne claims that he's too poor to buy some sacks of flour and few pounds of beans, yet he has no trouble engaging a band of badmen and buying them ammunition! And what a neat co-incidence that one of the pursuing Indians was wearing that charm bracelet that belonged - of course - to Wayne's mother! Wayne is his usual ruggedly roughshod self, Clift is less neurotic than usual, Brennan minus more teeth is more talkative than ever and even has an off-camera commentary as well! A fascinating assembly of support players includes the Careys, father and son (though the two never meet), Tom Tyler (briefly glimpsed), Paul Fix as a whinger saved from a hanging and Chief Yowlachie surprisingly amusing as a comic relief assistant cook and bottlewasher!

Wayne was great, a flawed hero, and the way they aged him and he acted made it so convincing he was supposed to be around 60 by the movie's end. Clift was great, too. But that ending - yikes!!!! Totally unconvincing!! Clift and Wayne grinning at each other minutes after almost killing each other, with no concern for Cherry, whom Wayne just shot??? Bizarre!!! But otherwise great film. I have given this film more thought, and this is how I would have made it. I would still have Wayne livid when Clift takes over the drive, but NOT threaten to kill him. I would have Wayne tell Clift he was going to show up and confront him some day, leaving it as a veiled threat of some type of retribution. But when Wayne shows up at the end, I would let the surprise be that Wayne realized Clift did the right thing and - like when Jacob and Esau meet in the Bible - they make up. I would just have Wayne shoot Cherry's gun out of his hand and not really hurt him. Then I'd have Wayne make a dramatic speech to the effect that "it takes a big man to admit when he's wrong and I'm a big man" and then show Clift how the brand will be changed to include him with the M.

This is one of my least favorites of John Wayne's "big" pictures. I've watched it before, but this time around I wanted to pay more attention to why I dislike it.Reason number one: Americans today can't really relate to cattle drives. We all can relate to the story in "Rio Bravo" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence", because we all still know bullies. What do Americans today know about cattle? Well, they see the steak or the hamburger, but can't relate to farming and cattle drives. Usually there might be a love story in the mix, but that angle is killed off in the first few minutes of the movie, and love doesn't resurface until late in the picture. And by the way, when they have a freshly killed steer, why not eat the meat and relieve the men of one crisis -- the constant complaints of beans, beans, beans.Reason Number two: This is one of several John Wayne films where Wayne's character goes over to the dark side, but here for no apparent reason. Three men want to quit the cattle drive, but Wayne doesn't want to lose any cowboys, so he murders them. How exactly does that make him not lose cowboys? And then he announces that he's going to kill has "adopted" son because he doesn't constantly kiss his butt. Wayne is awfully unlikable here.Reason number three: The audience isn't dumb. We can see the same ridge in the shots in what is supposedly action covering several separate days.That's not to say that there aren't some good things in this film. And the most important of all is the surprisingly fine performance of a young Montgomery Clift. Not surprising in that he was a very fine actor, but surprising because who really sees him as a cowboy? And then there's the blessing of another superb performance by one of Hollywood's most dependable actors ever -- Walter Brennan. There are several other fine character actors here, as well -- Noah Berry, Jr., Harry Carey Jr. and Sr. (!), and Paul Fix, among others.The cattle drive is looooooooong, and the ending, when Wayne catches up with is son in Abilene ends in a totally unrealistic way. He's ready to beat and murder his son, but a silly and frantic speech by the boy's girlfriend takes away all his anger.If you can overlook the inconsistencies, it's a pretty good film.