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From: reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: Re: RIO BRAVO
Message-ID: <9329@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 24-Feb-86 02:59:53 EST
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.9329
Posted: Mon Feb 24 02:59:53 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 24-Feb-86 23:00:55 EST
References: <1679@mtgzz.UUCP>
Reply-To: reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (Peter Reiher)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 67

In article <1679@mtgzz.UUCP> leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) writes:
>				  RIO BRAVO
>	  Capsule review:  Classic Western with a very good
>     reputation but with feet of clay.
>
>
>     The cast for this film were chosen more for marquee value than for
>acting talent.  Besides Wayne, who always did the world's best imitation of
>John Wayne, there was current heart-throb Ricky Nelson for the teenage girls
>in the audience and Dean Martin for their mothers.  Neither ever won any
>acting awards.  
Your description of John Wayne shows a fundamental ignorance of how film
acting works.  (Since I know you've seen an awful lot of films and must
know this already, I'll ascribe it either to a rhetorical lapse or a
particular dislike of Wayne.)  Some film actors are great actors.  Others
are great personalities.  In the long run, the performances you'll 
probably remember all of your life come from the personalities, not the
actors.  The best of the personality actors had reasonable range, but,
when push came to shove, they all relied on who they were and what films
they had done before, not on innate talent.

Wayne was one of the consummate personality actors.  He had little range
(though more than many belief: don't forget "The Quiet Man", "The Long
Voyage Home", and "The Searchers").  But what he did he did superbly,
and no one else could do at all.  John Wayne *was* a man who would
save your town single-handed, and make you believe it.  (Or, to be accurate,

he would save any on-screen town; let's not mix up the actor and man
too much.)  He practically reeked of the Old West.  Let's put it this way:
if you were doing a remake of "Rio Bravo", who would you cast in the
lead today?  Sylvester Stallone?  Christopher Reeve?  Harrison Ford?

As far as Dean Martin goes, he could be a very good actor, on occasion.
(Most notably, "Some Came Running".)  His big problem as an actor was
that he usually didn't take things seriously.  (His second biggest
problem was that he knew Frank Sinatra; a close relationship with
Sinatra destroyed several budding acting careers in a hazy glow of
buddyism.)  Ricky Nelson was just another young punk actor, one who
didn't make it really big.  Some do, some don't.

>     I won't deny that RIO BRAVO has some fun to it.  Most critics seem to
>like it and it is worth a peek.  ... So if it is enjoyable why am I picking 
>holes? Well,nobody else seems to be doing it.  Rate RIO BRAVO a flat 0 on 
>the -4 to +4 scale.

I would put it a bit more strongly than "worth a peak".  More like,
"must see".  I will admit that I prefer the remake, "El Dorado", mostly
because I prefer Robert Mitchum to Dean Martin, but "Rio Bravo" is a bit
fresher, and both are highly exciting.  (In fact, Hawks made the same
film three times.  The third remake, and the weakest, is "Rio Lobo".)

Given some of the weak films which you give postive ratings to, giving a
mediocre rating to "Rio Bravo" seems unusual.  I suppose that, if one
carefully remembers that your ratings refer to nothing more than your
own opinion, it's not so hard to understand.  But, too often, we all tend
to forget that a numerical rating isn't any less subjective than a
prose description, it just has the seductive power of a number, trying
to convince us that, since something has been quantified, some inner
truth has been revealed.  That's why I don't like numerical rating
systems.

Picking on a movie because no one else does seems like an odd occupation.
What gets the hatchet next, "Citizen Kane" or "Potemkin"?
-- 
        			Peter Reiher
				reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU
        			{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher