leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (02/19/86)
RIO BRAVO
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Classic Western with a very good
reputation but with feet of clay.
This month Cinemax is running the 1959 Howard Hawks Western RIO BRAVO.
The film is a sort of answer to HIGH NOON. John Wayne plays a sheriff about
to have problems, just like Gary Cooper did in HIGH NOON. In the earlier
film Cooper had to face a handful of killers. Hawks's one-ups-manship has
Wayne facing dozens. And how do they react? Cooper spent his time trying
to get someone to help him. The Duke, of course, has more of an image to
live up to. He spends his time trying to discourage people who want to help
him. The question nevers enters his mind that he might not be man enough to
take on any number of people who want him dead. Sure enough Wayne, with a
little help from two or three selected friends, is more than enough to take
on a small army. Of course, Rambo later took on bigger armies in even more
contrived plots, but Wayne was modest and was willing to be equal to only
three or four dozen men in his scripts.
The cast for this film were chosen more for marquee value than for
acting talent. Besides Wayne, who always did the world's best imitation of
John Wayne, there was current heart-throb Ricky Nelson for the teenage girls
in the audience and Dean Martin for their mothers. Neither ever won any
acting awards. Also on hand are Angie Dickinson, Walter Brennan, and Ward
Bond.
I am not sure where the title came from. There isn't one scene with a
river in it in the entire film. But then, Westerns with Spanish names--you
know, RIO GRANDE, RIO LOBO, EL DORADO, VERA CRUZ, SILVERADO--they all have a
sort of epic feel.
I won't deny that RIO BRAVO has some fun to it. Most critics seem to
like it and it is worth a peek. It has some reasonable humor; most Hawks
films seem to. Also there is a long opening sequence, somewhat
experimental, in which for three or four minutes there is action but no
dialogue. Any Howard Hawks film is worth seeing, but RIO BRAVO is good in
spite of itself. So if it is enjoyable why am I picking holes? Well,
nobody else seems to be doing it. Rate RIO BRAVO a flat 0 on the -4 to +4
scale.
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeperreiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (02/24/86)
In article <1679@mtgzz.UUCP> leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) writes: > RIO BRAVO > Capsule review: Classic Western with a very good > reputation but with feet of clay. > > > The cast for this film were chosen more for marquee value than for >acting talent. Besides Wayne, who always did the world's best imitation of >John Wayne, there was current heart-throb Ricky Nelson for the teenage girls >in the audience and Dean Martin for their mothers. Neither ever won any >acting awards. Your description of John Wayne shows a fundamental ignorance of how film acting works. (Since I know you've seen an awful lot of films and must know this already, I'll ascribe it either to a rhetorical lapse or a particular dislike of Wayne.) Some film actors are great actors. Others are great personalities. In the long run, the performances you'll probably remember all of your life come from the personalities, not the actors. The best of the personality actors had reasonable range, but, when push came to shove, they all relied on who they were and what films they had done before, not on innate talent. Wayne was one of the consummate personality actors. He had little range (though more than many belief: don't forget "The Quiet Man", "The Long Voyage Home", and "The Searchers"). But what he did he did superbly, and no one else could do at all. John Wayne *was* a man who would save your town single-handed, and make you believe it. (Or, to be accurate, he would save any on-screen town; let's not mix up the actor and man too much.) He practically reeked of the Old West. Let's put it this way: if you were doing a remake of "Rio Bravo", who would you cast in the lead today? Sylvester Stallone? Christopher Reeve? Harrison Ford? As far as Dean Martin goes, he could be a very good actor, on occasion. (Most notably, "Some Came Running".) His big problem as an actor was that he usually didn't take things seriously. (His second biggest problem was that he knew Frank Sinatra; a close relationship with Sinatra destroyed several budding acting careers in a hazy glow of buddyism.) Ricky Nelson was just another young punk actor, one who didn't make it really big. Some do, some don't. > I won't deny that RIO BRAVO has some fun to it. Most critics seem to >like it and it is worth a peek. ... So if it is enjoyable why am I picking >holes? Well,nobody else seems to be doing it. Rate RIO BRAVO a flat 0 on >the -4 to +4 scale. I would put it a bit more strongly than "worth a peak". More like, "must see". I will admit that I prefer the remake, "El Dorado", mostly because I prefer Robert Mitchum to Dean Martin, but "Rio Bravo" is a bit fresher, and both are highly exciting. (In fact, Hawks made the same film three times. The third remake, and the weakest, is "Rio Lobo".) Given some of the weak films which you give postive ratings to, giving a mediocre rating to "Rio Bravo" seems unusual. I suppose that, if one carefully remembers that your ratings refer to nothing more than your own opinion, it's not so hard to understand. But, too often, we all tend to forget that a numerical rating isn't any less subjective than a prose description, it just has the seductive power of a number, trying to convince us that, since something has been quantified, some inner truth has been revealed. That's why I don't like numerical rating systems. Picking on a movie because no one else does seems like an odd occupation. What gets the hatchet next, "Citizen Kane" or "Potemkin"? -- Peter Reiher reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU {...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher