Rio Bravo

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

I recently picked this one up for cheap at CD Cellar, which is where most of my income is going these days. I really need to stop shopping there.

Rio Bravo is a classic Howard Hawks/John Wayne collaboration (Bad Boys 2 Soundtrack style). It has been a few years since I'd seen it.

Well, I don't like this one quite as much as El Dorado, the remake that Wayne and Hawks made a few years later (for me, Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson are no match for Robert Mitchum and James Caan), but that's not to say that this isn't one hell of an entertaining flick. My main gripe is that Hawks does a great job of setting up a hopeless situation for the heroes, but then he cops out with a lighthearted ending where none of the good guys die. I mean, you expect them to come out on top, but to disregard 2 hours and 10 minutes of suspense with 10 minutes of goofy action and throwaway one liners is a big disappointment. Not that you want a grim ending, that would be wrong too.

Anyways, good times.