The film revolves around the mayor of Rio Bravo, Texas, who is acting strangely. This man is trying to experience the arrest of a brother of a strong pastoral farm with the help of a paralytic. It seems that this paralyzed man will be drunk in the city, as well as a young fighter.
Wayne, of course, walks off with the show -- not by doing anything in particular, but simply by being what he is: at 51, still one of the most believable he-men in Hollywood.
To watch Rio Bravo is to see a master craftsman at work. The film is seamless. There is not a shot that is wrong. It is uncommonly absorbing, and the 141-minute running time flows past like running water.
Despite its slickness, virility, occasional humor and, if it may be repeated, authentic professional approach, it is well-made but awfully familiar fare.
Total Film
April 23, 2013
Warm, witty and endlessly welcoming, not only is it the filmmaker's finest Oater -- better even than the sparkling Red River -- it's arguably the quintessential Hawks flick.
Underrated at the time of its release, this majestically paced western is one of the finest achievements of the genre and stands as a career-best for many of its participants.
The movie is simultaneously an apogee of the classic Western style, with its principled violence in defense of just law, and an eccentrically hyperbolic work of modernism, which yokes both bumptious erotic comedy and soul-searing rawness to the mission.
