Rio Bravo

Rio Bravo
by Howard Hawks

Rio Bravo
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Product details

Actor: Angie Dickinson, Dean Martin, John Wayne, Ricky Nelson, Walter Brennan
Director: Howard Hawks
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog; Spanish (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
Running Time: 141 minutes
Release Date: 1993-01-26
Audience Rating: Unrated
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Studio: Warner Home Video

VHS Movie Reviews of Rio Bravo

Movie Review: Pure Cowboy Slock!
Summary: 2 Stars

Old Wooden Wayne and twenty-something Angie Dickinson with the most uncomfortable hooey dialog ever written. It was just awful. And Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson as cowboys, come on! Just an awful film. See Wayne in any Maureen O'Hara film, a thousand times better.

Movie Review: Doesn't quite live up to the hype
Summary: 3 Stars

Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959)

I've heard a few times that Rio Bravo was an ultra-right-wing response to High Noon. I'm not terribly sure about all that, but having watched the two films without a month or so of each other now, High Noon is the clear winner from the simple standpoint of being a good movie. Because of the back-and-forth, I feel like blaming the message. Problem is, there's not really much of a message to blame; while Rio Bravo certainly isn't a bad movie by any standards, both John Wayne and director Howard Hawks were capable of far superior work, and showed that many times.

John T. Chance (Wayne) is the sheriff of your typical small western town besieged by bad guys, in this case the Burdette Brothers, Nathan (John Russell) and Joe (Claude Akins), and their string of hired guns. The trouble starts when Chance, his all-but-useless deputy Borrachon (Dean Martin-- "Borrachon" is a nickname, of course, the word is Spanish for "drunk". An inspired piece of casting, there!), and their old-geezer flunky Stumpy (Walter Brennan) lock Joe up. Nathan responds by killing a local rancher, and one of his hands, a young firebrand named Colorado Ryan (Ricky Nelson), wants in on the revenge. This, of course, sets up musical numbers with Nelson and Martin (and who knew Walter Brennan could sing?). It also sets up the big gunfight at the climax. It's not a spoiler. How often do you see a western that doesn't have a big gunfight at the end?

It's certainly not a bad movie; I'm not sure Hawks was capable of making a bad movie. Nor was Wayne, once he got out from under the heel of Lone Star in the thirties. And while this is a well-acted and well-paced movie, it's pretty typical genre stuff, save the musical numbers. Howard Hawks is not Vicente Minnelli, and I'm not sure he should've ever tried to be. Still, if you're in the mood for a wetsern, and all your library's copies of High Noon are out, give this a shot. (I should say, by the way, that I'm as much a conservative as either Wayne or Hawks ever were-- and I still prefer High Noon). ***


Movie Review: Wonderful Western Classic
Summary: 5 Stars

The two-disc special edition of Rio Bravo is a classic
"American Western." John Wayne, Angie Dickinson, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson,& Walter Brennan spin this classic western yarn. Howard Hawks gives outstanding direction with his artistic expertise. A glimpse into America's golden movie era. You won't want to miss the insightful glimpse through Howard Hawk's genius, as he takes you behind the scenes into movie making. Your western movie collection is incomplete without Howard Hawk's Rio Bravo.

Movie Review: rio bravo dvd
Summary: 5 Stars

Very good service, the dvd in mint condion and arrived just a few days after I ordered.

Movie Review: Amazon sells defective product
Summary: 1 Stars

I ordered two different copies of this collectors edition. Both times Amazon sent defective products. There were two of the same discs in the set and one disc was missing.

Summary of Rio Bravo

When it comes down to naming the best Western of all time, the list usually narrows to three completely different pictures: John Ford's The Searchers, Howard Hawks's Red River, and Hawks's Rio Bravo. About the only thing they all have in common is that they all star John Wayne. But while The Searchers is an epic quest for revenge and Red River is a sweeping cattle-drive drama ("Take 'em to Missouri! Yeeee-hah!"), Rio Bravo is on a much more modest scale. Basically, it comes down to Sheriff John T. Chance (Wayne), his sobering-up alcoholic friend Dude (Dean Martin), the hotshot new kid Colorado (Ricky Nelson), and deputy-sidekick Stumpy (Walter Brennan), sittin' around in the town jail, drinkin' black cofee, shootin' the breeze, and occasionally, singin' a song. Hawks--who, like his pal Ernest Hemingway, lived by the code of "grace under pressure"--said he made Rio Bravo as a rebuke to High Noon, in which sheriff Gary Cooper begged for townspeople to help him. So, Hawks made Wayne's Sheriff Chance a consummate professional--he may be getting old and fat, but he knows how to do his job, and he doesn't want amateurs getting mixed up in his business; they could get hurt. This most entertaining of movies also achieved some notoriety in the '90s when Quentin Tarantino (director of Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, and Jackie Brown) revealed that he uses it as a litmus test for prospective girlfriends. Oh, and if the configuration of characters sounds familiar, it should: Hawks remade Rio Bravo two more times--as El Dorado in 1967, with Wayne, Robert Mitchum, and James Caan; and as Rio Lobo in 1970, with Wayne, Jack Elam, and Christopher Mitchum. --Jim Emerson

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