A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow Rematch! Marcia Clark vs. Mark Fuhrman on Fox special Y E S T E R D A Y Cheerio, Seinfeld By Joyce Millman Bidding farewell to the greatest sitcom of all time (05/04/98) R E C E N T_. M O V I E S He Got Game Reviewed by Gary Kamiya Spike Lee's soft-hearted but moving tribute to faith, love and basketball (05/01/98) Les Miserables A high-minded film version of Victor Hugo's epic tale of crime and obsession (05/01/98) Two Girls and a Guy Reviewed by Charles Taylor Tale of a womanizer and the women who confront him has brains and unrestrained eroticism (04/24/98) Sliding Doors Reviewed by Stephanie Zacharek Gwyneth Paltrow misses her train and forever alters her life in this romantic comedy (04/24/98) Sour Grapes Reviewed by Laura Miller "Seinfeld" co-creator's big-screen dud (04/24/98) BROWSE THE MOVIE ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES REVIEWS INTERVIEWS

THE GREAT AMERICAN MOVIE | PAGE 2 OF 2_ "I didn't think a good sheriff was going to go running around town like a chicken with his head off asking for help," he said. But if Wayne's Sheriff John T. Chance sets the movie's standard for bravery, composure and the ability to assess a situation and act accordingly, he also suffers from the flaws that men of action are prone to: notably, a tendency to judge too quickly, and by appearances. When Chance knows someone, as he does Dude -- the deputy who fell into a bottle at the end of a love affair and hasn't yet climbed out -- or Brennan's Stumpy -- the limping, irascible old jailkeeper -- he sees past their flaws. With newcomers, like Nelson's Colorado or Dickinson's Feathers, Chance falls back on snap judgments that turn out to be wrong. The first time we see Wayne it's in a low-angle shot, standing over Dude, who, desperate for liquor money, stoops down to retrieve a coin tossed tauntingly into a spittoon. Wayne's not only looming over Dude, but over us, superior to anyone who could stoop so low, to any human weakness. But, in an act of rough compassion, Chance has also just kicked the spittoon out of the way, preventing Dude from humiliating himself. "Rio Bravo" is about how Dude, and the other characters, are able to rise to their feet and look Chance in the eye. The twist Hawks employs in his answer to "High Noon" is that the sheriff who won't ask for help needs it over and over again. That help always comes from the "flawed" characters, the kind of people that the powerful -- the Nathan Burdetts and Newt Gingriches of the world -- devalue: an alcoholic, an old man, a kid, a woman. When Chance's friend Wheeler (Ward Bond) realizes who's standing with Chance against the Burdetts, he says, "A bum-legged old man and a drunk. That's all you got?" and Chance answers, "That's what I got." There isn't a frame of Frank Capra's we-the-people speechifying that I wouldn't trade for the way Wayne says that line, the slight pause before "what" emphasizing the weight he puts on the word, the word itself conveying that people are more than figures entered on a debit sheet. In his superb book "Romantic Comedy," James Harvey said, "All the scenes of 'Rio Bravo' are scenes of pure behaving." That's the reason a movie with such a simple plot takes nearly two and a half hours, and why nothing in it feels expendable. "Rio Bravo" offers none of the conventional pleasures of westerns: the thrill of watching men and horses ride across vast landscapes, the feeling that you're breathing in those vistas. Most of the action, long stretches of it taking place in real time, is confined to the indoors. It's the spirit of "Rio Bravo" that's so expansive and, simultaneously, so intimate, and this is why the movie works so well on video. Hawks gives us the time to live with these characters, who are defined not by the genre shorthand of their names -- Chance, Dude, Stumpy, Feathers, Colorado -- but by the personalities of the actors who play them. Their individuality is paramount; their individuality is the point. The John Wayne of "Rio Bravo" is the fullest expression of the persona most of us think of when we think of John Wayne. There's none of the young charmer of "Stagecoach," none of the psychosis of "Red River" or "The Searchers," none of the self-parody of "True Grit." John T. Chance embodies an authority secure enough in its own competence to be devoid of swagger, willing to acknowledge its shortcomings ("I found some were faster than me with a short gun," is how he explains to Colorado why he carries a rifle) and confident in the ability of other people to do better than they believe themselves capable, a conviction that Chance expresses with hard-edged compassion. ("Be nice to him and he'll fall apart in small pieces," is how he justifies his no-nonsense dealings with Dude.) Chance is often wrong in "Rio Bravo" -- in one instance spotting Feathers as a gambler but falsely assuming she's a crooked one -- and he's made to recognize it. Chance tells Feathers that if she changed her manner, her style of dressing and gave up playing cards, then people wouldn't assume she's a hustler. Her response expresses the movie's disdain for the false, shallow assumptions people make about others. "That's what I'd do," she says, "if I were the kind of girl you think I am." Let people make their assumptions. They have nothing to do with the person I am. And that's just the sort of stubborn integrity Chance respects. Wayne made a career of playing a bigger-than-life heroic figure who inspires people to live up to his example. In "Rio Bravo," he means much more to us when he becomes life-sized, humanized by the life-sized people around him. In "Rio Bravo," there's no one more life-sized than Martin's Dude. Dude is the suffering side of all the drunk jokes Martin traded on for years. At his best, Martin was a warm, natural actor, completely at ease in front of the camera. Dude is a man who has to rediscover that ease with himself. Seen at first skulking around the shadows of the saloon in hope of scrounging a drink, Dude is dirty, unshaven, afflicted with the sweats and the shakes. Seen in daylight, battling a hangover, he's agonized enough to wish he could crawl out of his own skin. This performance is an example of one of the infrequently acknowledged uses of star power: how painful it is to watch someone suffering the agonies that their status as movie star usually shields them from. It's wrenching to see Dude suddenly double over in pain or pound his leg with his fist as if pain were preferable to the deadness in his limbs. What's most wrenching is that we understand his drunkenness as a symbol for the sudden wrong turns we all take, for the insurmountable, intolerable gap between what we know we can be and what we are. That Dude finally does surmount that distance is part of what critic Robin Wood meant when he said the whole tradition of Hollywood was behind "Rio Bravo." It is also part of Hawks' optimism, which expresses itself here as profound respect for and delight in humanity. He rejects the notion that, in a democracy, there exists such a thing as people who can be thrown away. Wood was overstating the case when he wrote, "If I were asked to choose a film that would justify the existence of Hollywood, I think it would be 'Rio Bravo.'" But let me offer an overstatement of my own: If I were asked to choose a film that would justify the idea of America, it would be "Rio Bravo." SALON | May 5, 1998 - - - - - - - - - - - - N O W_S H O W I N G [ New releases available May 5 ] Alien: Resurrection Cop Land Gattaca L.A. Confidential Mrs. Brown Anastasia Flubber For Richer or Poorer Jackal Mouse Hunt