Rio Bravo

RIO BRAVO                 A                     

USA  (141 mi)  1959  d:  Howard Hawks

While this is generally considered the model for John Carpenter’s ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (1976), that’s putting it loosely, as much more of the action in this movie takes place outside the jailhouse where a sheriff, a cripple, and a drunk are keeping a prisoner locked up, despite the best efforts of his brother and his “extended” family of hired guns who have blocked off the town from the rest of the world and are lining the streets just waiting for their opportunity to set him free.  Hawks was angry with Gary Cooper’s performance in HIGH NOON (1952), thinking he did not represent the bravery of the actual sheriffs in the West, especially considering he spent much of the time asking people from the town for help rather than make do with whatever he had.  In the language of the West, brave men never asked for help, but only accepted it when it was offered.  John Wayne is just such a sheriff in this film, one of his more likeable roles as a hardened, crusty, rifle toting man who demands respect from anybody who tries to go up against him, so few people try.  Yet in the opening sequence, which is played out slow and tense, gauging a humiliating and disturbingly sadistic moment in a saloon, somebody whacks him over the head, which kept him from preventing what happened next, as a man at the bar (Claude Akins) shoots another man in cold blood.  Wayne catches up with him in the next bar, introducing himself by whacking him with the barrel of his rifle, knocking him out cold, hauling him off to the jail where the sheriff and his two deputies remain considerably outnumbered. 

The film is surprisingly easy on the eyes, as it has a terrific cast shot during the prime of their careers, all delivering among their career best performances. Wayne is solid as the no nonsense Sheriff John T. Chance, as his decisions are sensible, carefully reasoned, where he continually looks after the interests of others over his own personal welfare, perfectly expressed to the Wagon Train master Ward Bond early in the film.  Bond offers to help, and gets himself killed in the process.  Dean Martin is barely recognizable as the Dude (yes, before Jeff Bridges!), a nervous, sweaty, rather shifty kind of deputy who can startle you with his shooting accuracy, where almost Columbo-like, he takes people by surprise, as for the past 2 years (after losing a girl) he’s been on a drunk, but since this murder he remains sober, though going through the shakes through most of this film.  The Dude’s best moment is entering a bar filled with a dozen or so of the prisoner’s friends and having to pick out the man who shot Ward Bond, no easy feat, especially when they continue to ridicule him for being a drunk, but he impressively sizes up the situation perfectly.  The other deputy is Walter Brennan, a grizzled old man who walks with a limp and has one of the most recognizable voices in show business, often imitated by impersonators, but he gives a stellar performance here.  Add to this cast two stragglers who came in on the stage, Ricky Nelson as Colorado, a hired gun working for the Wagon master, and Angie Dickenson as Feathers, a notorious card shark listed as a known associate of a man on a Wanted poster who was caught cheating at cards, identifiable by her preference for wearing feathers.  Both are outstanding, especially Dickenson, where in every scene with Wayne she literally knocks his socks off, a smart headed woman, a whirlwind of sexual energy who steals every scene she’s in.  She’s a dynamo.

What makes these characters so useful is the way each one is used, as they carry the action when the camera is turned on them, as there’s an underlying story of a jailhouse that is surrounded and outnumbered, a sheriff who hasn’t a clue how to hold his prisoner as they wait for a federal marshal to arrive in six days.  How do they hold them off?  Rather than focus on the tension, which is established early, the director clearly delights in the infectiously appealing nature of pairing off different personalities, letting them each have brilliantly extended scenes together, where the bravado performances only color the already heightened tension.  Hawks is really in no hurry to deliver the inevitable showdown scene, which he delivers in spades, but the film is actually everything leading up to that moment, where the people become the story, where they have to stand their ground and take stock of one another, where they may occasionally wobble a bit in their belief in themselves, but they’re surprisingly supportive in the way they relate to one another.  It’s impressive how Hawks works a few songs into the works while sitting around the jailhouse, where Dean Martin sings “My Rifle, My Pony, and Me” accompanied by a guitar-playing Nelson, with Brennan on the harmonica, and all three chime in to Nelson’s “Cindy.”  The entire film is superbly written and directed, brilliantly acted, perfectly paced, with some terrific naturalistic sounding dialogue.  The bad guys and the owners of the hotel may be stock characters prone to stereotypes, but they don’t infect the psychological intrigue that is established early, as the film is surprisingly intricate, establishing a protective and harmonious community before our eyes through the complex interplay of such appealing characters. 

The Man from Laramie

                

THE MAN FROM LARAMIE                 B

USA  (104 mi)  1955  ‘Scope  d:  Anthony Mann

I don't suppose we spoke ten words comin' down here, but I feel that I know ya, and I like what I know.    —Charlie O’Leary (Wallace Ford)

The last of the James Stewart collaborations with this director, but this has to be one of their weaker efforts, as Mann’s distinct brand of realism is undercut by some uncharacteristically weak acting performances by several of the major players in this film.  Shot entirely on location in New Mexico, Stewart as Will Lockhart leads a wagon train into Coronado, New Mexico carrying supplies from Laramie, Wyoming, which miraculously arrives unscathed despite traveling through Apache country (where the reason becomes apparent with Lockhart’s real identity).  When they arrive into town, what’s most interesting is seeing the presence of so many Indians mixing peacefully with the other white residents in town, something not often seen in Westerns.  Barbara, the proprietor of the mercantile store turns out to be Cathy O’Donnell, one of the doomed lovers from Nicholas Ray’s noirish THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (1949).  When she gives a look of disappointment at the discovery that the goods she ordered and paid for actually arrived, this gives the audience premonitions of things to come.  There are several glaring flaws in the narrative, one of which happens next, as Lockhart decides he doesn’t wish to return to Laramie emptyhanded, so in searching for cargo to load the wagons with, Barbara indicates there’s salt flats nearby, but it’s dangerously close to Apache country.  As they’re seen filling the wagons with salt, they’re besieged by cattle ranchers who take them for rustlers trespassing on their land, where the quick tempered Dave (Alex Nicol) sadistically ropes Lockhart, drags him through fire by horses, burns his wagons and shoots most of their mules in order to send a message.  In the aftermath, Lockhart pays off his men who return to Laramie, but he decides he has unfinished business in town, riding in alone on his mule, which has a different feel than most Westerns, as riders on horses display a certain dignified independence and flair, while a mule is ridiculed and frowned upon, and seen as a sign of weakness.  

However that mood is quickly countered by an explosive scene in town where Lockhart spots Dave bringing in some cattle, pulling him off his horse before beating him to a pulp, then having to contend with the next in command, Vic (Arthur Kennedy), where an older woman with a rifle Kate (Aline MacMahon) sitting in her buggy vows to shoot anyone who interferes, causing a stir among the dozen or so ranch hands on the scene.  Dave’s father Alec (Donald Crisp) puts an end to the nonsense, agreeing to pay Lockhart for any damages caused by his son, but pretty much orders him out of town.  Alec owns nearly all the land in every direction for a three day ride, which includes Indian land, claiming he has an agreement to live together peacefully.  Lockhart asks about evidence he found of an Indian massacre of a U.S. Cavalry patrol nearby, where they were shot by repeating rifles, asking if that was part of the agreement?  This reveals an underside to the story, as Lockhart’s younger brother was killed in that raid, and he’s bound and determined to find out who’s responsible for selling those rifles to the Indians.  However, if that’s the case, that he planned to stay all along, why was he filling his wagons to head back to Laramie?  Still not sure who he’s searching for, Lockhart decides not to heed the advice of all interested parties and instead sticks around for awhile.  But he’s jumped by a man with a knife, luckily escapes unharmed, but is immediately arrested for that man’s murder, as he’s found stabbed to death a few moment’s later.  Rather than rot in jail, he is released to Kate’s custody on the provision that he work as her ranch foreman, as she’s one of the few holdouts to still own property that isn’t under the control of Alec. 

But when Kate sends Lockhart to a remote pasture to separate her cattle from Alec’s, Lockart is ambushed by Dave, a continuing theme, a hot-headed bully who shoots first and asks questions later, never thinking of the consequences, continually embarrassing his father, who unbeknownst to most everyone is going blind.  Lockhart, however, shoots him in the hand before he’s surrounded by Dave’s men, who in turn hold him down and shoot Lockhart point blank in his hand.  The two wounded souls go wandering off, Lockhart back to town to get mended by Barbara and Kate, while Dave has a wild-eyed scheme to sell repeating rifles which he has hidden atop a rocky hill to the Apaches, alerting them by smoke signals.  But Vic arrives and the two tussle over what to do, with Vic deciding the only way to stop him is to shoot him, killing him on the spot, bringing him back to the ranch on his horse where everyone immediately suspects Lockhart was out for revenge.  No one, by the way, asks Vic what happened.  By this time it’s clear Alec’s house is not in order, with the two fighting over superiority, they end up bringing the house down in disgrace.  But not before even more damage is done.  The staged finale is actually the weakest element of the film, making little sense, where this may be the poorest written of the Stewart/Mann collaborations.  The first to be shot in ‘Scope, this film emphasizes the brown emptiness that stretches to the horizon, land with little visible vegetation, a hard scrabble life to make a living off this scorched dry earth, where the toughness of the land was matched by the toughness of those who initially settled there, but now their dreams and ambitions have been compromised by greed and short-sightedness, where before Alec lost his sight, he was blind to what those two men were doing right before his eyes.  He just never suspected the rotten to the core thievery would come from within his own family.  Despite all the hints left along the way, by the end, Lockhart reveals his mysterious identity and his true mission, as he was a military Captain on an undercover military reconnaissance mission all along.  It is this knowledge that throws much of the early story into question.  This kind of film, however, predates the Sergio Leone “Man with No Name” Westerns made famous by Clint Eastwood. 

The Wild Bunch

THE WILD BUNCH                  C+                  

USA  (134 mi)  1969  ‘Scope  d:  Sam Peckinpah     1995  re-release (145 mi) 

I wouldn’t have it any other way.       —Pike Bishop (William Holden)

Law and order and grace and understanding are things that have to be taught. … People are born to survive. They have instincts that go back millions of years. Unfortunately, some of those instincts are based on violence. There is a great streak of violence in every human being. If it is not channeled and understood, it will break out in war or in madness. … [The children’s torture of ants and scorpions at the beginning of the film is] an ugly game, but it’s a game children play—unless they’re taught different. They would have had to be taught not to play that game. And man was a killer millions of years before he served a God.

—Sam Peckinpah, interviewed by Aljean Harmetz, The New York Times, 1969

I suppose I’m something of an outlaw myself. I identify with them. I’ve always wondered what happened to the outlaws of the old West when it changed.
—Sam Peckinpah

A film that has the feel of a death march all the way through, as the old ways refuse to give way to the new, and one of Peckinpah’s most prominent themes is given full display, as the last of a dying breed from the old West decides to hold out for just one more score, bringing a dramatic end to an era, one that Peckinpah choreographs with an exclamation point of unfettered violence.  This sets the precedent for others to follow, namely Quintin Tarantino, though it should be noted that all of Eastwood’s Sergio Leone films preceded this one, certainly two directors that play the violence card as others play with emotions.  What distinguishes this film is the make of the lead pack of outlaws, the last of the holdouts, as they are anything but noble characters, despite the director’s best intentions to persuade the audience to identify with them.  What they bring is a ruthless brutality of unmended souls, all broken in some capacity, like the walking wounded, who live their lives bringing nothing but death and hardship to others while they have exactly what to show for it?  Drinking and whoring apparently, which is all they ever do in their free time, basically wasting their lives away at the expense of others.  These men don’t give a damn about the civilized world, because all they see from it is a mercenary corps of armed goons that the railroad sends out to kill them.  Other than that, they’re used to taking what they want without asking.  But the real problem with this film, as it is with Tarantino, is the blatant use of stereotypes to demean entire groups of people, women as whores, Indians, Mexicans, soldiers, Generals, Germans, railroad workers, gutter trash, as one character calls poor uneducated whites, all portrayed in such negative light that it’s easy to think they all get just exactly what they deserve, because they’re worthless to begin with.  THE WILD BUNCH is tragically flawed in this respect.  Who wouldn’t rather be an ignoble outlaw to get away from such a pathetic depiction of society? 

William Holden as Pike Bishop leads the Bunch, one of his better roles, a man who gives direct orders and accepts no back talk, yet in quiet moments reflects upon everything that went wrong in his life.  Ernest Borgnine is Dutch Engstrom, his right hand man, a man always itching for a fight, yet in some ways the more sexually restrained and morally evolved of the group, a guy who laughs in the face of adversity, while Warren Oates and Ben Johnson play a tag team act of whiners and complainers, the low men on the totem pole, always jawing about something, thinking somebody’s always cheating them, that they’re not getting their fair share, while Jaime Sánchez as Angel is the dreamer, the believer in social justice, the man in the corner gently strumming the guitar and singing Mexican ballads.  The unknown factor is Robert Ryan as Deke Thornton, initially a member of the Bunch until he was left behind in a whorehouse one night when it was raided by the cops, ultimately sent to jail, where the railroad is pulling him out on a 30 day lease in order to track down his old gang, and the guy is persistent, following the escaping Wild Bunch like those unseen trackers “Who are those guys?” from BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969), released the same year, and a film this in some ways defies, yet resembles in the final sequence.  Renowned for its editing, where editor Lou Lombardo claims there were "3642 individual cuts in the film," six times more than a standard picture, yet one of the more distinguishable edits ended up on the cutting room floor, as the flashbacks were initially seamless, using straight cuts, but since this had never been done before, the edits were revised by the studio heads into dissolves so the audience could tell it was a flashback.  The film opens with a robbery gone wrong, where more people get shot in a single sequence than many viewers will see in an entire year.  But this is a set up, as in town, led by Deke, they were waiting for them and made suckers out of them, filling the money bags full of worthless washers.  The honor among thieves is displayed when one of their wounded is hurt so bad he is shot by their own men to put him out of his misery rather than slow them down, and don’t even think about a burial.   

Despite their criminality, the bunch is seen as striving to be human, where the characters are well-defined and the dialogue is crisp and often amusing.  They may be a rag tag group but they think they abide by a sense of honor through loyalty, as jaded as that may appear to be.  This is the film’s centerpiece, however, the glue that holds them together, the purpose that separates them from becoming animals, and yet this is the most glaring betrayal of all, as they end up leaving Angel behind for the sadistic amusement and pleasure of a two-bit Mexican General who does business with the Bunch, but singles him out as a thief, betrayed by a woman, leaving Borgnine in a state of paralysis, as it’s either get shot or leave him behind.  When they go in after him, more to evade the railroad trackers than out of any loyalty to Angel, they act surprised at the inhuman treatment on display, as he’s being gruesomely tortured in front of the entire town, no different than a lynching or a public hanging.  This sacrifice of one of their own has a way of humiliating them, eating at their already corrupt souls, and it leads to the final set piece, known for its mix of standard speed and slow-motion, often thought of as ballet-like in its depiction of human slaughter, a kind of nihilist memoriam that has come to typify the senseless violence portrayed in standard Hollywood movies of today, from invading aliens or zombies or just plain bad guys who need to be pulverized out of existence.  American audiences in particular have become used to seeing hundreds of deaths in a matter of seconds, where life itself has lost all worth or meaning.  The exaggerated laughter in this film, because it is so insincere, is as distasteful as the use of violence, as it’s used like a Greek chorus to comment upon the human theater.  The barren wasteland depicted at the end of the film with villagers carrying out the dead and wounded as well as looters taking whatever they can is a fairly accurate portrait of the moral void left behind.

Post Addendum:

I guess there are books written, generations of admirers, and careers established by advancing the artistic merits of Peckinpah, someone I happen to admire myself, but not as a fanboy.  The Wild Bunch has always been a troublesome film for me, and yes, one should look at the artistic expression of a tormented soul.  At the risk of being thrown off this site for cinema sacrilege, I also have the same trouble with Tarantino, whose body count is legendary, who is more of a copycat stylist, adding his own stamp of personality upon the originality of others.  Well, you know, one could say the same of Mozart, who simply used traditional means of expression and improved upon them without revolutionizing the artform.  Peckinpah is placed in the pantheon of revolutionaries for his near ballet-like depiction of massive and grotesque violence in Wild Bunch, leading to other similar stylists like Tarantino or John Woo, but I find that misleading, preferring to think Bonnie and Clyde (two years earlier), not to mention Eastwood in the entire Sergio Leone Western series, were much more radically ahead of their time, and not nearly so miserablist in spirit. 

Thinking back, it is amazing that this miserablism and downright defeatism was right on the heels of some of the most radically inspirational thinking this country has ever seen.  Forget how they were infiltrated and obliterated, but the ferocity of spirit and sheer audacity in the formation of the Black Panthers is beyond description using today’s mentality.  How do you explain that to your grandkids?  And we put a man on the moon the same year this film was released, but there were also plenty of arrests, unending police brutality, and political assassinations  Certainly that era is known for having higher ups and lower lows, and Peckinpah seemed to relish the stupor that misery brings, a state of mind not uncommon with returning veterans, as they’ve seen horrible things no one on earth should have to see, and they have to find a way to live with it, continually having to deal with flashbacks swirling around their head.  So that may at least partially explain Peckinpah’s personal demeanor, as his alcoholism and drug use didn’t start out of thin air.  So the question is, how does this translate to his movies?   

Some of Peckinpah’s films and characterizations are amazingly tender, but what of the misfits in Wild Bunch, cold blooded murderers every one?  I read that people sympathize with them, but after seeing them shoot in cold blood one of their own, that would be impossible for some. And perhaps that's the line of demarcation.  These men are without redemption, yet all of Peckinpah's dialogue and attention to detail goes into the creation of these characters, who are extremely well developed, while the railroad men and townsfolk are all stock characters, largely portrayed as buffoons. Part of what really bugs me is his use of stereotypical and lazy portrayals of the townsfolk, which seems cruelly comical, as it’s not so funny.  In fact it’s vulgar and insulting, no different than demonizing, which reflects, I suppose, the state of mind of the outlaws.  But I’m inclined to attribute that laziness to Peckinpah, as everyone else in the film is equally revolting, while the Bunch are portrayed as heroically fighting to retain their independence, stubbornly refusing to give it up, even against all odds, and eventually, without really considering their options, accept suicide as an acceptable state of mind.  So in the end, there’s no ideals, no heart, nothing to live and strive for, we're all just revolting creatures?  And this is a time honored masterpiece?  I'll stick with Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, which is a joy to watch, and is all about heart and human sacrifice, but the defeatist miserablism of The Wild Bunch really leaves me cold. 

Barney's Version

BARNEY’S VERSION                                               C                    

USA  (132 mi)  2010  d:  Richard J. Lewis 

An erratic and horribly uneven version of the vulgar and boisterous life of Barney (Paul Giamatti), loosely based on the Mordecai Richler novel, who also provided the original source material for the esteemed Canadian film about growing up in Montreal as a Jewish teenager in THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ (1974), starring a very young Richard Dreyfuss.  They play out as bookends in the author’s life, where Kravitz was a bundle of nervous energy, a smart and overly ambitious  kid who would stoop to anything to make an extra buck, while Barney has already discovered financial success by producing the long-running, yet brainless and sleazy television soap opera O’Malley of the North that resembles Russ Meyer without the sex and nudity.  The performances are excellent, but there's something missing in the tone of the story where the witty sarcasm of the book does not translate well onto the screen.  While it should be this sprawling uproariously funny work, it's instead a fidgety affair with only intermittent humor, much of it way over the top in Jewish stereotype.  Never as nuanced as a Barry Levinson film, the premise is a bit outrageous, where at his second marriage (his first wife committed suicide) he goes existentialist at his own ridiculously exorbitant Jewish wedding to Minnie Driver, which seemingly goes on forever, wandering around as if in an alcoholic daze questioning the meaning of it all, until he sets his eyes on Rosamund Pike, which alters his life forever, immediately falling head over heels for her and telling her so, which is not exactly in good taste at one’s own wedding.  How about waiting a week?  So while that’s the real issue, Barney and his equally candid father, Dustin Hoffman, are portrayed as more uncivilized lower class Jews, not in the same financial bracket as Driver and her ostentatiously rich father, so there’s a wedge between them from the beginning. 

The two don’t appear destined to spend the rest of their lives together and are aided by a miniature side story, which is a film in itself.  Barney’s best man at the wedding is a real loutishly off-color character, Boogie Moscovitch (Scott Speedman), think Thomas Haden Church in SIDEWAYS (2004), a guy that taught Barney everything he knows, his carnal conscience, who’s always high on some illegal substance, eventually becoming a junky that Barney intends to help sober up, inviting him to the summer home, a cabin on a lake, where in a wrong turn somewhere, has sex with Minnie Driver, paving the way for the intended divorce.  But that’s only half the story, as after Driver leaves in hysterics running back to Daddy, Barney has a drunken tête a tête with his friend, which also includes ill-advised playful gestures with a loaded gun.  What happens afterwards is lost in a drunken stupor, or so it seems, as Boogie has disappeared, perhaps shot by Barney, where the police are called sometime after Barney sobers up and drag the lake but can’t find a body.  Barney quickly moves on after this incident, but it stays with him for the rest of his life, where perhaps only he knows what really happened, or more likely, the trauma wiped out whatever did take place from his memory banks.   

Barney wastes no time rediscovering Pike, who he’s been pursuing all along, and who’s rather flattered at the gesture.  And what’s not to like, especially considering he’s an obnoxious, insecure, cigar-smoking alcoholic with a flair for bad taste, and the film does a few time alterations, jumping ahead to when they’re already married with grown children before moving back to early childhood again, where she sacrifices her budding career in the radio business to become a mother of two children.  They appear happily married and content, where she is “the one” for him, but he drinks too much and indulges in only what he wants, like insulting her friends and watching hockey games in bars, leaving her feeling less than satisfied, so when a good looking guy shows up around the lake (Bruce Greenwood), a guy already working in the radio business, Pike gets the urge to return to work, with this new guy, of course.  Barney’s life spirals all out of control, initially suspecting something’s up before he makes a stupid decision on a drunken binge, literally driving her into his arms.  Like the sexual incident in his earlier marriage, Pike uses this for all it’s worth, even having the kids gang up against him, ultimately moving in with the hunk in the radio business, something Barney unfortunately can’t even remember, as he has early onset of Alzheimer’s Disease and continues to believe they’re happily married.  It’s a tragic story of lost opportunities, told with plenty of gusto by a first person narrator who may be known for embellishing as he looks back on his life, suggesting there’s also plenty to be grateful for.  Anna Hopkins as his daughter makes a terrific screen appearance, while brief cameos of Canadian filmmakers Denys Arcand (as the erudite waiter), not to mention Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg (as TV directors) grace the screen.