On the weekend of Our Nation's 250th anniversary, Your Humble Narrator once again had the honor to introduce this week's edition of Reel West Sundays at Western Spirit: Scottsdale's Museum of the West, and lead the post-movie discussion. The selection was...
Rio Lobo (1970)--In the last film that Howard Hawks directed, John Wayne plays a Union army colonel in charge of moving a shipment of gold at the end of the Civil War. Confederate raiders rob the train, and after the war ends, The Duke goes west to get even with the traitors among his men who betrayed the mission.
This was the third Hawks western starring Wayne in just over a decade, after Rio Bravo in 1959 and El Dorado in 1966, all written or co-written by Leigh Brackett. But the similarities run deeper than that; the three films seem almost like loose remakes of each other. All three feature The Duke and his allies guarding a prisoner in a besieged jailhouse from corrupt forces who would like to free him. There are other devices that pop up almost obsessively--prisoner exchanges, dynamite used as a weapon--and all three feature a crotchety old sidekick and a plucky young sidekick; in Rio Lobo the youngster is the lively Christopher Mitchum as "Tuscarora" and the oldster is Jack Elam, having a high time as Tuscarora's maniacally giggling father.
The glamour comes from Wayne's hunky second lead, the Mexican star Jorge Rivera as the leader of the raiders, and from Jennifer O'Neill, one year away from fame in Summer of '42, who looks every inch the Cover Girl model she was. She rocks her leather pants and feels very 20th Century, as do her female co-stars Susan Dosamantes and Sherry Lansing; they come across more like the women in a Beach Party movie. But however anachronistic, they do follow in the Hawks tradition of self-directing, non-subservient women.
Rio Lobo is the least of this odd trio of films, maybe because the seige part doesn't start until the homestretch of the film. Until then it feels a bit aimlessly structured and rambling. But it's still pretty entertaining; Wayne is at his most likable and the movie is full of terrific, reliable supporting players including, among others, David Huddleston, Mike Henry, Victor French, Robert Donner and even a glimpse of George Plimpton, of all people, among the heavies.
