Rio Bravo

Howard Hawks was the master of mockery. His films were filled with them (SF Said said in his review, “think of Bringing Up Baby or His Girl Friday”) but “Rio Bravo,” released in 1959, is the best one. It’s mainly a western, but it’s really about a bunch of friends who name call one another, put down one another, and mainly joy in their friendship. They give one another nicknames. John Wayne’s risk-taking Sherriff is named Chance. Then there’s his lame friend Stumpy (Walter Brennan) and drunk deputy Dude (Dean Martin), also called Borachón (Spanish for “drunk”).

They get caught up in a fight with a villainous rancher (John Russell), who has countless heavies at his side. “A lame-legged old man and a drunk – that’s all you got?” one (Ward Bond) asks Wayne. “That’s what I got,” he corrected them concisely. In Hawks’s movies, all a man needs is his team of friends, however dysfunctional they appear.

Luckily, the team encounters a sharp woman named Feathers (Angie Dickinson) and a quick youngster Colorado (Ricky Nelson), who plot to outsmart the villains with a flowerpot. Said mentioned, “Dickinson also runs romantic rings around Wayne, making this icon of Hollywood machismo look like a bumbling fool. That was the kind of fun Hawks loved to have with his stars; he made Cary Grant wear drag for most of I Was a Male War Bride.”

Said continues, “Hawks said he liked "three-cushion dialogue", in which no one says what they mean. Rio Bravo is full of it, yet some of its most eloquent moments are silent.” Dean Martin getting over alcoholism is seen not through speeches but his trouble to roll a cigarette. We know Wayne loves him because he’s always ready to give him his own. That’s the type of info that makes this film. It’s warm, human and completely necessary, even 59 years later.

I have to be honest; this movie is just a joy and a lot of fun to watch. I love the banter between Wayne and Martin, and you will as well when you watch this one. You have to see this, if you’re a fan of Wayne and Westerns. If you haven’t seen this film, go out and watch it. This is one of those must see movies and possibly another one of my favorite Westerns.

Check in next week when I look at a trilogy of Westerns that Wayne had starred mostly in, in “John Wayne Month.”