Rio Bravo

Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo (1959) was a film I watched repeatedly with my dad back in the day, and I finally purchased the DVD over the weekend. Unfortunately, although enjoyable, Rio Bravo is not the sum of its parts, encapsulating both the good and bad of the Classic American Western. It's clearly the model for John Wayne's later films, complete with slight plot, lame young sidekick and push-over baddies. Fortunately, Rio Bravo is a Howard Hawks film, and despite its flaws it's an entertaining Western.

Sheriff John T. Chance (John Wayne) arrests Joe Burdette (Claude Akins) for murdering a man in a saloon brawl. Joe's brother Nathan (John Russell) brings a huge gang of killers into town to free Joe. Chance spurns outside help, relying on a small posse of unlikely gunslingers - the drunken Dude (Dean Martin), the quick-drawn greenhorn Colorado (Ricky Nelson) and the cranky old Stumpy (Walter Brennan) - to fight Burdette's men. As the situation escalates, Chance romances Feathers (Angie Dickinson), a feisty saloon girl trapped in town.

Supposedly a conservative answer to Fred Zinnemann's High Noon (1952), Rio Bravo is a perfect distillation of Howard Hawks' preoccupation with professionalism and grace under fire. Unlike Gary Cooper's meek Will Kane, Chance and his buddies don't need help - interlopers like the kindly wagon master Wheeler (Ward Bond) are "well-meaning amateurs" who are liable to get themselves shot. These guys need to bond and prove themselves worthy of inclusion in Chance's team: Dude by sobering up, Colorado with some fast shooting. With fellas like these working together, the wimpy Burdettes don't stand a chance.

It must be said, Rio Bravo is seriously flawed. Its slow, languorous pace belies its simple plot, and too much time is spent hanging around in bars, yammering about what has happened and might happen, and worst of all, singing cheesy cowboy songs. Suspense is largely frittered away by these sidetracks, the siege interrupted by repeated trips outside. The bad guys are push-overs who doom their chances by stupidly refusing to kill Chance and Co. time and again. Worst of all is Feathers, a pushy Hawksian woman who is completely out-of-place. Say what you will about Joanne Dru in Red River, at least she played some role in the story; Dickinson, though lovely, is just window dressing.

Nonetheless, Hawks excels in individual sequences. The best two are early in the film: the almost-wordless opening, where a shamed Dude confronts Joe, and Dude's ferreting out a murderer concealed in a bar, betrayed by a dripping gunshot wound. These scenes are brilliant, self-contained set-pieces that almost work without context. The action is briskly filmed, and despite the languid pace, the film is never boring per se; just tedious. Still, Hawks crisp direction and Leigh Brackett's witty script command attention, and there's little technical fault with the film, aside from Dimitri Tiomkin's underwhelming score.

John Wayne gives a fine performance: if ever a film embodied the Duke's iconic, tough-guy image, it's this one. Dean Martin is impressive, giving a subtle performance which balances action and quiet character moments. Marginally-talented singer Ricky Nelson is sidelined just enough to avoid making a complete ass of himself. Angie Dickinson's character is useless, but at the very least she's charming and has some chemistry with the Duke. Walter Brennan (My Darling Clementine) does his usual cranky old pappy shtick, which isn't too annoying here. Ward Bond (The Searchers) has a nice bit, but Claude Akins (Inherit the Wind) and John Russell (The Outlaw Josey Wales) are wasted, and Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez's antics get tiresome really fast.

For all its faults, Rio Bravo is a fun and well-made film, and it provides a fine introduction to Wayne and Hawks.