Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Am I Missing Something?

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Westerns capture a time when the United States was undeveloped and not so disciplined allowing people to really live off the land and display their talents skills as well as their character. That's why you get such a good mix of people like good guys, bad guys, Indians, Gunslingers, lawmen, pioneers, cattle rustlers, settlers, bandits, saloon keepers and general store operators. Cattle was a much needed source of food to the new Cities and Towns just springing up as well as for the folks back east. Who doesn't like a fine piece of steak with the trimmings? Well cattle drives were no easy cakes of walk but very lucrative if you could pull it off. History is presented here in entertainment form. Add whiskey, fights, shootings, Western towns, dust, beans, coffee and down to earth living and you got the makings of a good flick. Further add some top notch actors and we have a classic on our hands. This be that movie and more. Lots of memorable scenes, emotions tugging and real life situations decided in the moment they appear, this movie keeps you entertained start to finish as it is also of epic quality too. If all this is not enough, you get tension, drama and a nice show-down with a good closure in the end. Everyone gave it their best including the Director. Mark this as a....

This greatest of Westerns and most American of all films is so famous as to hardly need a formal review as a movie, and at any rate discussion of it is easily found in countless printed and on line sources. For those who've never seen it, I'll only say that this 1948 Howard Hawks epic of John Wayne, with his adopted son Montgomery Clift and sidekick Walter Brennan undertaking the first major cattle drive on the Chisholm Trail is one of those supreme classics, like Hitchcock's Vertigo or Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai, which is as appealing as entertainment for a general audience as it is impressive as a work of art to critics. It's also undoubtedly John Wayne's best role -- reportedly John Ford upon seeing it exclaimed, "I didn't know the son of a ----- could act!" Noted film critic David Thomson has written that this is his favorite movie.The film can be found on various DVDs and collections, of which the 2014 Criterion set is by far the one to prefer.

Disenchanted by his stubbornness during a grueling cattle drive, an orphan stands up to the rancher who raised him as his own in this iconic western starring Montgomery Clift and John Wayne. While contemporary film scholars often obsess over the homosexual subtext as Clift and co-star John Ireland compare guns ("maybe you'd like to see mine?"), the heart and soul of the film is the surrogate father/son chemistry between Wayne and Clift, how obsessed Wayne is with land, and how betrayed he feels. All of Wayne's innermost insecurities come out well in a speech about how he "can't live forever", wanting a son as someone to pass his hard-earned land/cattle on to. Usually a solid rock of machismo, Wayne is at his most heartfelt, and viewed for a third time, his performance comes across as magnificent. Not so impressive is Dimitri Tiomkin's score. It is atmospheric but also melodramatic at all the wrong times, especially during Wayne and Clift's shoot-out halfway in. Wayne's descent into sleep deprived madness also disappoints as we are told more than shown how he is losing his grip on reality. The film additionally has some pacing issues, but overall, it is engaging and stands up very well to repeat viewings with a tangible human drama element constantly elevating it above genre clichés. There are several fun moments of comic relief too, such as how one man takes an incredibly long time warming up to signing his name, only to then write an X on the document.

This is one of my least favorites of John Wayne's "big" pictures. I've watched it before, but this time around I wanted to pay more attention to why I dislike it.Reason number one: Americans today can't really relate to cattle drives. We all can relate to the story in "Rio Bravo" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence", because we all still know bullies. What do Americans today know about cattle? Well, they see the steak or the hamburger, but can't relate to farming and cattle drives. Usually there might be a love story in the mix, but that angle is killed off in the first few minutes of the movie, and love doesn't resurface until late in the picture. And by the way, when they have a freshly killed steer, why not eat the meat and relieve the men of one crisis -- the constant complaints of beans, beans, beans.Reason Number two: This is one of several John Wayne films where Wayne's character goes over to the dark side, but here for no apparent reason. Three men want to quit the cattle drive, but Wayne doesn't want to lose any cowboys, so he murders them. How exactly does that make him not lose cowboys? And then he announces that he's going to kill has "adopted" son because he doesn't constantly kiss his butt. Wayne is awfully unlikable here.Reason number three: The audience isn't dumb. We can see the same ridge in the shots in what is supposedly action covering several separate days.That's not to say that there aren't some good things in this film. And the most important of all is the surprisingly fine performance of a young Montgomery Clift. Not surprising in that he was a very fine actor, but surprising because who really sees him as a cowboy? And then there's the blessing of another superb performance by one of Hollywood's most dependable actors ever -- Walter Brennan. There are several other fine character actors here, as well -- Noah Berry, Jr., Harry Carey Jr. and Sr. (!), and Paul Fix, among others.The cattle drive is looooooooong, and the ending, when Wayne catches up with is son in Abilene ends in a totally unrealistic way. He's ready to beat and murder his son, but a silly and frantic speech by the boy's girlfriend takes away all his anger.If you can overlook the inconsistencies, it's a pretty good film.