Red River

Red River (1948)

Runtime: 133 minutes

Directed by: Howard Hawks... and Arthur Rosson

Starring: John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Walter Brennan, Harry Carey, Joanne Dru

From: United Artists

(Note: I did not know this until after watching the 133 minute version online, but there's actually another cut of this out there. The 133 minute cut is the most common one; however, director Howard Hawks preferred a shorter 127 minute cut and that was restored and put out by Criterion in 2014; maybe one day I'll see that)

I've been wanting to watch more Westerns and more John Wayne films; with this I killed two birds with one stone. It is a highly regarded genre film and is regarded as one of the both for Wayne, Montgomery Clift, and director Howard Hawks. The story is simple: a hard-working but gruff man (The Duke) who builds the largest cattle ranch in Texas; as the area is poor he has to drive a herd of 10,000 cattle up north a thousands miles; he does this with a group of people, including his adopted son Matt (Clift); Matt is the opposite of dad so there's natural friction and as things become difficult, things boil over.

The great thing about this movie is that it can be viewed several different ways. You can side with Wayne, Clift, both, or neither of them. You can understand why they act the way to do and with various events throughout, it's up to you who was “right” and who was “wrong”. You can prefer the ferocious Duke or the more kind-hearted Montgomery, who Wayne thinks is “soft”. No matter how you think, it's validated by what happens in the film. That goes along with the story being thrilling in general; there's a lot of stimulating moments as they have to keep all that cattle moving without having any stampedes and having to deal with such things as Indians and other enemies. The in-fighting among the colorful supporting cast may be the most dangerous threat, though. No matter what, I am amused that Wayne's character is so terrifying that multiple people are petrified of him as if he was a slasher movie villain.

To me, the most memorable supporting act is the character that Walter Brennan plays; he has the hilarious name of NADINE GROOT. Was Nadine ever a name that you gave for a boy? Of course, the Groot part became pretty funny to me in recent years. He says a lot more than “I am Groot”, that is for sure. As it's a movie from this time period, of course there's a dame involved (Joanne Dru), although she doesn't appear until the latter half of the picture; she still makes a definite impact.

Even with an ending on the abrupt side, this is a great film, with a lot of manliness on display. You get different sorts of manliness but it's still manly nonetheless, and it's greatly directed by a legendary director.