Directors: Howard Hawks and Arthur Rosson
Writers: Borden Chase and Charles Schnee
Starring: John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru, and Walter Brennan
Karate Kid says: This movie was about some cowboys on a cattle drive. They live next to the Red River, which is the river that makes up the border between Texas and Oklahoma. They owned the Red River Ranch, and decided to take their cattle to somewhere they could sell it. On their way, they will have a stampede, an ambush, and even a mutiny!
Mom says: I liked this one better than I did The Searchers, but the ending was lame. The writers were drawing on the imagery of herd behavior in which dominant males fight for leadership of the group. There are two young “bucks” on the cattle drive, Matt and Cherry. Then, there’s Dunson, the old but strong leader of the drive, who is also conservative and set in his ways and determined to be obeyed and feared, no matter what the cost. The tension between these three, but mostly between Matt and Dunson, who is Matt’s mentor and father figure, makes the movie go. But then, at the end, although Matt’s love interest, Tess Millay, has a great scene in which she tells them both off for acting like idiots, the tension just sort of drains off into anti-climax.
Still, it’s a good movie to watch with your kids if you’re learning about the cattle drive/cowboy era of U.S. history or if you just like cowboy movies. Dunson shoots or threatens to shoot a few men in cold blood basically for just getting in his way or challenging his authority, and that part was rather shocking to my youngest (and to me). The stereotype of savage Native Americans was still there, but not as prominent as it was in The Searchers. In Red RIver, the Indians are not characters, and the Indian attack is just a plot device to place another obstacle in the way of the cattle drive and give the hero a chance to be heroic. The one Native American character who is on the cattle drive with the cowboys is a part of the comic relief, not very believable or interesting.