Red River (1948)
This feels like the very definition of a big classic American western. John Wayne, Howard Hawks, bombastic score, big open landscapes, thousands of cattle and Indians as faceless shooting practice. Obviously not everything has aged equally well.
Wayne is sort of the bad guy as the kleptomanic cattle rancher that works his men hard. Over the more than 2 hour running time, which works out as a long episode of Rawhide, plenty of dramatic things happen on the long trail and his men starts to turn against him.
Compared to Ford’s big westerns, Hawks feels a bit lighter with a more celebratory depiction of the good people of the frontier. The ending where Wayne’s character has a sudden change of heart is pretty abrupt, but I mostly buy it even though it could have been handled better.
Rating: 3.5