Red River (1948)

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!

Disenchanted by his stubbornness during a grueling cattle drive, an orphan stands up to the rancher who raised him as his own in this iconic western starring Montgomery Clift and John Wayne. While contemporary film scholars often obsess over the homosexual subtext as Clift and co-star John Ireland compare guns ("maybe you'd like to see mine?"), the heart and soul of the film is the surrogate father/son chemistry between Wayne and Clift, how obsessed Wayne is with land, and how betrayed he feels. All of Wayne's innermost insecurities come out well in a speech about how he "can't live forever", wanting a son as someone to pass his hard-earned land/cattle on to. Usually a solid rock of machismo, Wayne is at his most heartfelt, and viewed for a third time, his performance comes across as magnificent. Not so impressive is Dimitri Tiomkin's score. It is atmospheric but also melodramatic at all the wrong times, especially during Wayne and Clift's shoot-out halfway in. Wayne's descent into sleep deprived madness also disappoints as we are told more than shown how he is losing his grip on reality. The film additionally has some pacing issues, but overall, it is engaging and stands up very well to repeat viewings with a tangible human drama element constantly elevating it above genre clichés. There are several fun moments of comic relief too, such as how one man takes an incredibly long time warming up to signing his name, only to then write an X on the document.

Red River is another one of the timeless films that just somehow seems to get better with age. This is the first of a series that totalled 5 films which saw the combination of John Wayne and Howard Hawks. This film is sometimes compared to Mutiny on the Bounty but from a western point of view. The relationship between the two main characters "Tom Dunson" and "Matt Garth" is based on trust, each would kill the other if required but that doesn't mean they don't trust or respect each other. This was probably if not the best film that was released during 1948.Montgomery Clift portrays Matt Girth extremely well and Walter Brennan also performs a good part as Tom Dunson's side kick.In summary a story about the cattle drives of the 40's what problems a they faced. Its really well worth a watch again and again.