Rio Bravo

This ponderous beast of a 1959 Western by director Howard Hawks stars John Wayne, Angie Dickenson camping it up, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson. Martin and Nelson even sing. The chemistry between Angie and the Duke is non-existent. She tries hard, but he is just unresponsive. His scenes with Martin, typecast as a drunk whom Wayne is trying to redeem, are much more impassioned. At least Grace Kelly in High Noon gets to shoot someone.

This movie lasts 2:21 but could easily have been a tight, tense drama of 1:21. I never liked anything about John Wayne and this movie made me like him even less. It is fine to project cool self-confidence under pressure, but here he takes the short-cut of not even seeming to care most of the time.