Red River
1948 Directed by Howard Hawks, Arthur Rosson
Synopsis
In 25 Years, Only Three! "The Covered Wagon", "Cimarron" and now Howard Hawks' "Red River"
Dunson is driving his cattle to Red River when his adopted son, Matthew, turns against him.
Cast
Popular reviews
More-
I'm still stunned at just how huge this movie is, and how riveted I was watching a 2-hour long cattle drive. Near the end of this, Montgomery Clift walks into a room and stares at the ceiling for a while before saying how strange it was to be under a roof for the first time in 3 months. It's just as strange for the viewer after everything we've seen. I think this is a near perfect golden-age American Western that can sit alongside Shane and Rio Bravo among others. John Wayne is just massive in this.
-
From my Top Directors Watchlist @ letterboxd.com/collykibber/list/top-directors-watchlist/
Big, bad, sprawling Western cattle drive. On the subject of films with universally unsympathetic characters, this is an example of an unusually noirish cowboy movie. Of course, Howard Hawks is the king of crossing genre borders, as adept with gunslinging tropes as he is with compromised private eyes. Perhaps, it is easier to deal with shades of grey in characterisation when the time period, a la Deadwood, predicates desperate measures, simply from the necessity to survive. John Wayne's dreams of feeding America with beefy brain food turn to gravy as even bigger badasses stop him from trading in his cattle herds. There are enough dark motivations in this film to make a nonsense…
-
There is a reason we don't make westerns anymore. It's because we perfected them already.
-
Not my kind of western at all. Melodramatic, unintentionally funny and uneventful. What little happens is over before you've blinked and treated in a nonchalant matter. Clift is the only highlight.
-
You know the feeling when you watch a truly epic movie and think to yourself: "This is the biggest movie ever". Hawks and his crew did an incredible job by filling the background with an seemingly endless army of cattle while actors did their job in the foreground. But just like with any great epic movie, all the majestic sights and sweeping panoramas mean nothing if you haven't got a good story and great characters at its core. Fortunately, Red River has it all in spades, especially when it comes to a very carefully constructed and developed relationship between two main characters played by Wayne and Clift.
Another thing is that even after 65 years it is as entertaining and…
-
Cheesy as all hell with a pro-capitalist "land-grab" message where bullets are bandied about like handshakes, Red River isn't subtle but The Duke doesn't do subtlety. Some of the scenes in this film are just dog-gone epic: the stampede, fording the river, circling the wagons during a Comanche attack... It's about as good as any of the westerns of this era can get.
Recent reviews
More-
Beautiful 35mm print screened at AFI Silver in Silver Spring. Wonderful film all the way through. Everything about this movie makes me happy. Unreal at how well Hawk's directed this. Great every time.
-
This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.
-
I'm still stunned at just how huge this movie is, and how riveted I was watching a 2-hour long cattle drive. Near the end of this, Montgomery Clift walks into a room and stares at the ceiling for a while before saying how strange it was to be under a roof for the first time in 3 months. It's just as strange for the viewer after everything we've seen. I think this is a near perfect golden-age American Western that can sit alongside Shane and Rio Bravo among others. John Wayne is just massive in this.
-
Hawks' Red River is a powerful western, with one of John Wayne's greatest performances.
-
There is a reason we don't make westerns anymore. It's because we perfected them already.
-
Not my kind of western at all. Melodramatic, unintentionally funny and uneventful. What little happens is over before you've blinked and treated in a nonchalant matter. Clift is the only highlight.
-
From my Top Directors Watchlist @ letterboxd.com/collykibber/list/top-directors-watchlist/
Big, bad, sprawling Western cattle drive. On the subject of films with universally unsympathetic characters, this is an example of an unusually noirish cowboy movie. Of course, Howard Hawks is the king of crossing genre borders, as adept with gunslinging tropes as he is with compromised private eyes. Perhaps, it is easier to deal with shades of grey in characterisation when the time period, a la Deadwood, predicates desperate measures, simply from the necessity to survive. John Wayne's dreams of feeding America with beefy brain food turn to gravy as even bigger badasses stop him from trading in his cattle herds. There are enough dark motivations in this film to make a nonsense…
-
This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.
-
A disappointment. Not holding up for me. Not that it's terrible, but it's not the 5-buck western of its reputation, in my view.