![]() ![]() The adventurous narrative is certainly conceptually intriguing enough for a rewarding final product to be crafted, though not easily, because outside of the manufactured, a sense of conflict is a little lacking, and it doesn't exactly get too much meatier the more the film drags along. In all fairness, expository superficiality might stem from general superficiality, for although there's more grace with this film than the usual western of this type and time, there's not much to subtlety, whose lapses get to be cheesy at times, at least with their manufacturing certain melodramatic conflicts that try to make up for a lack of meat to the basic idea behind this plot. The films open up just in time for the adventure to begin, with the bare minimum, if not some holds to background development, then proceeds to be surprisingly limited with extensive expository depth throughout the body of this ostensibly intimate drama. I don't really know if this film has the pretense of being all that refreshing as a ranch adventure western, but that doesn't make the conventions much less notable for building a formulaic plot whose character aspects are still not quite as familiar as they probably should be. If nothing else distinguishes this film from "Rio Gra-I mean, "Rio Bravo", it's this film's actually being better, but not exactly by a long shot, thanks to certain shortcomings. I just like how this film let you know just how old Wayne was by 1948, alone, by having a grown Montgomery Clift play his son (Adopted but still), and still predating "Rio Bravo" and "Rio Grande". Well, it's a while before those Mexicans come into play, so if no other stereotype gets you confused about the difference between this and, well, most every other western of the mid-20th century, it is, again, John Wayne in a starring role. Ladies and gentlemen, before "Rio Bravo", Howard Hawks, John Wayne and Walter Brennan joined forces to bring you this, which you still might get confused with "Rio Grande", seeing as how this film is set around a river, and has some stereotypical Mexicans. Shoot, I don't know why I had to go through all of that trouble, because once you see that this stars John Wayne, oh boy, you better believe that it is a western if there ever was one. Hey, it's a little less cheesy than making a clichéd reference to "Moon River", although maybe I should have gone that route in order to avoid some confusion, because without a tune that peaceful, one might think this would be a horror film or something, based on the title. "Red river, red river, send John Wayne right hither". ![]()
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