The sheriff of a small town in southwest Texas must keep custody of a murderer whose brother, a powerful rancher, is trying to help him escape. After a friend is killed trying to muster support for him, he and his deputies - a disgraced drunk and a cantankerous old cripple - must find a way to hold out against the rancher's hired guns until the marshal arrives. In the meantime, matters are complicated by the presence of a young gunslinger - and a mysterious beauty who just came in on the last stagecoach.
Despite its slickness, virility, occasional humor and, if it may be repeated, authentic professional approach, it is well-made but awfully familiar fare.
– A.H. Weiler,
New York Times,
25 Mar 2006
fresh:
Howard Hawks's finest western (1959), and perhaps his finest film.
– Dave Kehr,
Chicago Reader,
13 May 2008
fresh:
Rio Bravo is a big, brawling western.
– Variety Staff,
Variety,
13 May 2008
fresh:
To watch Rio Bravo is to see a master craftsman at work. The film is seamless. There is not a shot that is wrong. It is uncommonly absorbing, and the 141-minute running time flows past like running water.
– Roger Ebert,
Chicago Sun-Times,
23 Apr 2013
fresh:
The movie is simultaneously an apogee of the classic Western style, with its principled violence in defense of just law, and an eccentrically hyperbolic work of modernism, which yokes both bumptious erotic comedy and soul-searing rawness to the mission.