Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Married Baby Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Smoreni Zmaj Top 10 best western movies of all time?! Nope. In my opinion, just an average movie. After Hawks' "Bringing Up Baby", "His Girl Friday", "Scarface", "The Big Sleep"... this comes pretty much as disappointment. :(6/10

JohnHowardReid Most people are going to enjoy this film. The story builds up well with some wonderful action set-pieces and montages, even though it could certainly benefit from further trimming. Coleen Gray making too much of her one scene would be twice as effective at half the length; and as for Joanne Dru, she doesn't belong in the film at all. True, she makes an extremely late entrance, but the story got along quite effectively without her. All she does is to slow down the pace and dissipate most of the tension. Mind you, the plot has some gaping holes. For instance, Wayne claims that he's too poor to buy some sacks of flour and few pounds of beans, yet he has no trouble engaging a band of badmen and buying them ammunition! And what a neat co-incidence that one of the pursuing Indians was wearing that charm bracelet that belonged - of course - to Wayne's mother! Wayne is his usual ruggedly roughshod self, Clift is less neurotic than usual, Brennan minus more teeth is more talkative than ever and even has an off-camera commentary as well! A fascinating assembly of support players includes the Careys, father and son (though the two never meet), Tom Tyler (briefly glimpsed), Paul Fix as a whinger saved from a hanging and Chief Yowlachie surprisingly amusing as a comic relief assistant cook and bottlewasher!

Fella_shibby I first saw this in the mid 90s. Revisited it recently on a blu-ray. The story is about a determined n ruthless man who has forsaken everything in order to build his cattle empire from the ground up. John Wayne did a terrific job in portraying the man who is stubborn, focused n mean. The man doesnt hesitate to kill anyone who tries to come between his way but at the same time gives the dead an honorable burial. He snatches peoples land n cattles forcefully without giving a damn. He gives orders as well as spot on death punishment even if it means u r found stealing sugar. The only guy who can stand against the tyrannical fella is his adopted son played by very well by Montgomery Clift. Now imagine trekking more than a thousand miles journey filled with rough terrain, rains, rivers, animal stampede, food shortage n hostile Injuns with this tyrant fella. While watching this film one is transported as if one is among the trekkers. We have lots of interesting characters, Walter Brennan playing Waynes very old n loyal friend who is ready to provide Wayne with a weapon in need of time but at the same time laughs when he sees Wayne getting a beating. Ivan Parry as a sugar-addicted fella who may be responsible for a stampede. Chief Yowlachie beating Brennan in a poker game. Harry Carey Jr. who is eager to bring money home to his family n a pair of red shoes for his wife. There are two things i didnt like in this film. The ending was a bit letdown. After creating so much tension n suddenly....... The other thing was the lack of shoot-out scenes. We hav a gunslinger Cherry played by John Ireland but his role was too small n the final confrontation between him n Wayne was again like u blink n u miss.

cricket crockett . . . in a misguided attempt to add a couple hundred million individual writing styles to the hard-enough-to-read printed page. If there's anything MORE diabolically tedious than reading a printed book, it's struggling to decode a volume scribbled out in cursive. Hard as it may be to imagine for Modern Folks of Today, that's exactly what a movie studio called MGM expected people to do IN A MOVIE THEATER with its RED RIVER flick. At least 14 times (at 2:04, 13:56, 14:24, 14:33, 42:50, 45:17, 47:02, 59:37, 1:01:48, 1:09:52, 1:23:35, 1:46:03, 1:53:34, and 1:58:00--I could have nodded off through several more of these deal breakers) MGM puts a paragraph WRITTEN IN CURSIVE up on the screen for a couple of seconds (NOT long enough to actually decipher it, but for just a sufficient amount of time to make the audience feel that they've missed something that must be important) to dry up any "flow" this snooze-fest might otherwise channel. (A "friend" gave me this RED RIVER "Book Version" from a two-disc DVD set, but kept the first disc for themselves!) Just when you think that RED RIVER cannot possibly get any worse after an hour and a half, an actress named Joanne Dru ("Tess") suddenly pops up to try out her Lauren Bacall impression. She fails miserably, not even teaching Montgomery Cliff how to whistle. At least director Howard Hawks soon admitted on tape that last-minute substitute Dru (whom the temp agency sent over when the originally cast Tess actress confessed that she was pregnant in Real Life on the first day of shooting) totally stunk up his picture.