My 4th of July movie was a John Wayne Western, Howard Hawks’s “Rio Bravo,” and it don’t get more American than that.
According to Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies, the film was a direct response to “High Noon” (it’s been a long while since I’ve seen it, but I think it’s a bit overrated myself) in that a sheriff would never go around asking for help.
In my mind, this meant to me that “Rio Bravo” would be one of Wayne’s gruffer, stubborn performances for not asking for help, but after arresting the murderer Joe Burdette, his real reason is a noble one; he’d rather not see a bunch of innocent amateurs serve as “more targets to shoot at” for the wealthy Nathan Burdette’s men.
In fact, all of “Rio Bravo” is built on this sense of misguided morality, not logic, and it establishes a long-running formula of a hero, a hotshot kid, a drunk and an old man fighting for what’s right. Wayne’s John T. Chance (T for Trouble) is only the sheriff because it’s a job he’s been doing for a long time and is good at. Dude (Dean Martin) doesn’t have anywhere else to be because he’s a pathetic alcoholic. Stumpy (Walter Brennan) is a sly, funny old coot, but is best served staying put inside the jail. Colorado (Ricky Nelson) is good enough that he could move on if he wanted, but he sticks around because he feels needed.And then of course there’s Feathers (Angie Dickinson), Chance’s love interest. She is completely enamored with him from the moment the two appear on screen together, and she especially has no reason to stick around in this war zone of a town. Wayne looks hilariously out of place dealing with her head-over-heels, screwball comedy antics borrowed from another Hawks film.
It makes “Rio Bravo” feel dopey and funny as a result. A lot of the set pieces are riveting and enthralling, but double more as team-building exercises that contribute to the film’s broader themes about asking for help. The final showdown against Burdette and his men shines because the whole squad of deputies helping out by providing cover and hurling dynamite as target shooting is such a gleeful lark, not a grim Western battle at High Noon.
“Rio Bravo’s” added depth comes from Dean Martin’s character. The way Hawks handles alcoholism is curious, again not a personal struggle but an effort in asking for help and assistance from friends. It feels like lighter fare than it reasonably should, but it allows Martin to clean up real nice in a later scene to look like he just came off the Vegas strip and then share a duet with ’50s teen heartthrob Ricky Nelson. Martin’s far from being the actor Sinatra was, but he’s the real heart of the movie.
I’m a bit short on why “Rio Bravo” is a masterpiece. It doesn’t strike me as Wayne’s best, Hawks’s best or the genre’s best, but it’s the foundation for a longstanding movie formula and a gem at the tail-end of a legendary director’s career.