River of color

I've been blogging for almost 11 years, and I note that I've never done a post on Red River. Since it was on TCM recently, I DVRed it and re-watched it to do a full-length post.

John Wayne plays Thomas Dunson, who at the start of the movie is a scout in a group of pioneers going west sometime in the 1840s. However, he's reached a point where he feels going west isn't a good idea, and he goes south with his friend Groot (Walter Brennan). It's a fortuitous decision, as not long after the leave they see a bunch of smoke coming from the direction of the wagon train, which can only mean they've been attacked by Indians.

Dunson talks of setting up a big ranch even though he doesn't quite have the cattle yet to do it, and because somebody further south claims the land. And a few days later, young Matt Garth (Mickey Kuhn as a boy; he'll grow up to be played by Montgomery Clift) shows up. He passed by the pioneers who were in fact annihilated, and has nobody left in the world, so he becomes a sort of foster son to Dunson.

Quite a few years pass, and now it's 1865, which if you know your American history you'll recall is the end of the Civil War. Texas being part of the Confederacy was destroyed, leaving all of the ranchers in the region destitute. Worse, the southern rail stock was destroyed because it was a strategic objective by the north, so it's not as if there are any stockyards nearby in a place like Dallas to deliver the cattle to. The nearest would be Kansas City, although that has its disadvantages, too.

Still, it's drive the cattle or starve, so the other farmers go along with Dunson and set out toward Missouri. But there are also sorts of problems, with Indians and the threat of dissension within the ranks being the biggest. The second one is a bigger problem because Dunson is obsessive about continuing the drive and everybody else is thinking he's going too far. That, and there are rumors of the railroad having made it to nearer Abilene KS, and Dunson not wanting to go someplace where there's no concrete proof of a railroad. These may sound like clichés, but I'm trying to think of a big cattle drive movie that came before Red River.

Red River is one of those movies that is pretty well done, although to me it falls a bit short of the masterpiece status that some critics want to give it. Part of that is due to Brennan's character, who is just obnoxious. But there's also the ending, which felt rushed to me (and to a fair number of reviewers I've seen). The movie is entertaining, however, and certainly well worth watching if you've never seen it.