Nov 26 2008
Not much happening;how about a short movie review?
Kind of a dull patch just before Thanksgiving. The holiday isn’t till tomorrow, and so it’s wait and see time. Not going anywhere, just going to cozy up at home. Maybe watch a few old movies on the tube. Last night TCM showed Rio Grande, a John Ford western starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.
Rio Grande is considered the last of Ford’s so-called calvary trilogy, a group of three films set in the West and concerned with the U.S. Army’s battle with the Indians. The first two parts of the trilogy are Fort Apache (1948) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949). Wayne is the star of all three films. All deal with the trials and tribulations of army life in the post-Civil War west, both military and personal. There is a certain longing and emotional undertow in these movies that sets them apart from the simple shoot ‘em up westerns.
Rio Grande is a good, but by no means great, western. The material is a little too famaliar to have the excitement of an original vision. But the plot is interesting and the vistas of buttes and desert spectacular. In this one, Wayne is given permission to cross the Rio Grande to finally attack the Apaches who have been making border raids across the river into America and then crossing back into Mexico, where the army could not at first follow. He is joined by his estranged wife and their son, who has been assigned as a raw recruit to his father’s unit. Wayne finally makes his peace with both his wife and son as the picture comes to its conclusion. This is one of those movies that fits like a comfortable old shoe, and it’s a pleasant way to spend two hours watching a good reliable friend, just in time for the holidays.
