Cinema Sunday: Rio Bravo

Hi there! With everyone in some kind of state of lockdown during the great coronavirus pandemic of 2020, it feels like we’re living life in a state of siege, if not from the disease itself but certainly from the panic and anxiety that surrounds us.

For today’s Cinema Sunday, I thought I would visit one my favorite all time westerns, a classic state of siege story film produced and directed by Howard Hawks and starring John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson, Walter Brennan, and Ward Bond. From 1959, here is Rio Bravo.

In Rio Bravo, Texas, Sheriff John T. Chance (John Wayne) has arrested Joe Burdette (Claude Akins) for murder.  Joe’s brother is Nathan Burdette, a rich and powerful rancher who thinks he runs things in this town and doesn’t take kindly to Joe being held in a jail cell, awaiting trial for killing some nobody. Chance thinks he’s the Sheriff around these parts and nobody’s getting to Joe before the United States Marshal arrives to take Joe to trial. 

And thus the siege of the Rio Bravo jail begins.

Chance doesn’t have a lot of resources on his side.

The sheriff’s deputy is Dude (Dean Martin) whose been crawling inside of too many whiskey bottles since his woman done did him wrong.  Dude’s a pretty damn good shot when he’s not drunk. Dude wants to be a better man, to once more earn Chance’s respect.  

Another deputy, Stumpy (Walter Brennan), is an old man with a bad leg and a worse disposition.

A young gunslinger, Colorado Ryan (Ricky Nelson), joins the cause after the trail boss he was working for is killed by one of Burdette’s men.

Complicating things is a mysterious woman nicknamed Feathers (Angie Dickinson) who has come to Rio Bravo to join a poker game at the saloon. Chance thinks she’s a card cheat but Colorado puts the finger on another player who is proven to be the cheat. Chance is not in a hurry for Feathers to leave town. Until he changes his mind, worried she would be in danger caught in the middle of this tense stand off between Chance and the Burdette boys. But Feathers just will not leave, dang it.

And so it goes as the Burdettes keep circling the jail, looking for any crack in Chance’s defenses to free Joe from the jail. Meanwhile, Chance and his men are determined to stay resolute in the face of all this tension. Dude, particularly, is looking for redemption, to make sure the Burdettes face justice and to prove to Chance he can be a better man. 

All you may know about Dean Martin is that he’s a singer your grand parents used to like and maybe you’ve seen some vintage clips of Dean from his old variety show or goofing around with Jerry Lewis. If so, Martin’s performance in Rio Bravo will be a surprise.  Dude is in bad shape from too much booze and a broken heart. But he’s not completely destroyed. There is enough of the good man that he used to be to realize he has fallen too far and wants to earn the respect of others. It’s not an easy journey for Dude. The urge to pick up a shot glass of whiskey even at the cost of his further humiliation is hard to resist. But Dude’s struggle to resist that call feels real. 

Angie Dickinson as Feathers is sexy as hell and that’s before her appearance in a dancer’s costume at the end of the movie. She’s smart and tough. Oh yeah, she has it bad for John T. Chance but she’s not just some girl all moony for some man. Feathers shows her heart and her strength when Chance who hasn’t slept in days actually takes some time to sleep at the hotel and Feathers stations herself outside his door to stand guard. How many times have you seen in a movie where the hero watches over the damsel while she sleeps? The bit with Feathers guarding Chance turns that trope on its head. 

Also, Stumpy brings dynamite to a gun fight. Yep, stuff blows up real good! 

John Wayne is… John Wayne.

Anyway, Rio Bravo is a very good movie filled with drama, humor, tension, adventure and even music. (With both Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson in a movie, there needs to a be duet and Dude and Colorado give us one.)

This is one of those movies that if I stumble across it on TV, I will have to stop doing whatever and finish watching it. It is one of top three Western movies

What  are the other two? That’s a topic for a future Cinema Sunday. 

Feathers says "G'bye, sweetie."