Rio Bravo

I guess we could call this one the anti-High Noon, since it tells a similar story, but doesn’t feature that film’s themes of alienation, cowardice, distrust and Red Scare symbolism. Instead, we have a band of outlaws, a sheriff willing and ready to protect the town, and a ragtag group of individuals who eagerly stand by his side throughout the whole ordeal. Oh, and we have a musical interlude and comedy, lots of it in the form of delicious witty and droll dialog.

There are a few things one that can always count on in any Howard Hawks film: good-to-career-best performances, a strong ensemble with an interesting and eclectic mixture of actors, an almost anarchic sense of forward motion in the narrative, and witty dialog. All of these elements are present in Rio Bravo. The only real problem with the movie is the uneven pacing, whenever it takes its leisurely time to do nothing in particular to advance the storyline proper, and it does this often, I feel like it could’ve been trimmed up to quicken the pace and give it a strong punch.

Which isn’t to say certain moments taken at a leisurely pace don’t work, because quite a few of them work spectacularly. The introduction is an astounding piece of filmmaking that only Hawks could get away with and enliven with such urgency. It’s, give or take, about five minutes long and there’s no dialog, just Dude (Dean Martin) wandering into town looking for some money to enable his alcoholism. When he stumbles back into town, he causes chaos in a saloon and the plot is off and running.

John Wayne is the sheriff, of course, and he does what he does best – act like a macho, he-man cowboy, the veritable symbol of the men who tamed the Wild West. He was never much of an actor, but for what he was capable of doing, he was the greatest. An as a bodily-focused actor, his drawl and tough-talk never wavered, he could make some interesting choices. His posture leaves much to be desired, frequently hunched over, or broken and contorted into odd shapes and angles, but these choices allow us to see the emotions within the character he was playing. That holds up as truth in Rio Bravo with any scene involving the lovely, fiery Angie Dickinson.

While Wayne is delivering a typical John Wayne performance, Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson (what the hell are they doing in a western anyway?) seem to be riffing on the kind of macho-centric performances that so many Western stars delivered. Martin’s drunk scenes are great, as are several scenes of his character going through withdrawal symptoms. But whenever he has to be the heroic character, it seems out of his prowess as an actor. Luckily, much of his character’s arch is in going from drunken stupor to rehabilitated hero, and this he nails. Nelson, oh so pretty and if I were a girl in the 50s I’d have a shrine to him in my bedroom, keeps his dialog to a minimum, but has a cocky swagger and a smirk that speak volumes. At times he seems to be trying out a John Wayne impression, and that works for the character, but he’s at his best whenever he’s allowed to be the cocky upstart to this group of old friends and aging cowboys. And while I enjoyed the musical interlude between Martin and Nelson while waiting for the shootout to occur, I don’t know how necessary it is to the plot. It seems like a concession to the audience that they couldn’t have these singers in the film and not have them sing, at least once.

Of course as the whole thing builds, slowly, to the climatic shootout, we get some hilarious dialog. Most of it delivered by Walter Brennan, who practically chews the scenery before spitting it back out into a spittoon. Brennan gets all of the biggest laughs, and he deserves as the cantankerous old man who may be a little crazy, but is still one of the best shots in the area. His character and performance recalls Walter Huston’s in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but replace the tragedy and darkness from his character with the amped up comic undertones. Obviously and deservedly, he steals the film out from everyone.

And the lengthy climatic shootout brings together various disparate strands from the film – comedy, western, action/adventure – and merges them into something truly great. At first it’s just the three main characters – Wayne, Martin, Nelson – against the gang who has cut off the town, brought in the wealthy brother of their leader for help, and terrorized the whole town for the past three days. Soon various supporting players arrive to help them out in the struggle. As an answer to High Noon it does show the typical community spirit in so many westerns (and war-themed films), in which a band of outsiders come together to restore order and law. But I don’t think Rio Bravo understood the political and social allegory going on beneath the surface in High Noon. As I walked away from Rio Bravo, I remembered many of the comedic interludes, appreciated several of the performances, loved many of the sequences, but didn’t know what it was trying to communicate and I thought it could of used another go around in the editing process. I wouldn’t call this one a Hawks masterpiece like The Big Sleep, but it’s a grand entertainment none the less.