Paula Hammond - Features EditorThere was a time when a rainy weekend, meant John Wayne films on the telly. Westerns — and Mr Wayne — may have fallen out of favour in recent years, but there’s a reason John Wayne was once the king of the Western: he always delivers a solid performance.
Rio Lobo isn’t his best film, but it isa worthy inclusion in his CV — channelling the old school Western at a time when the genre was rapidly changing.
In America, Revisionist Westerns – typified by the likes of The Wild Bunch, Little Big Man and Soldier Blue – were questioning the established mythology of the West. At the same time, Italy’s morally grey Spaghetti Westerns were at the height of their international popularity. In comparison, Rio Lobo plays out like a last huzzah: a tribute the type of Western they don’t make any more. Hell, even in 1970 when the film came out, they handn’t made Westerns like that for a while.
Wayne stars as Colonel Cord McNally of the Union army, who loses a close friend during a raid on a Union payroll train carried out by a group of Confederates under the leadership of Captain Pierre Cordana (Jorge Rivero) and Sergeant Tuscarora Phillips (Christopher Mitchum).
McNally suspects that he and his men were betrayed by traitors within the Union, setting in motion a quest for revenge that will continue even after the Civil War is over – and which will brinig McNally into a bitter conflict with ruthless landowner Ketcham (Victor French) and “Blue Tom” Hendricks (Mike Henry), the corrupt sheriff of Rio Lobo, Texas.
Rio Lobo was the last film the titan of American cinema — Howard Hawks — whose undisputed classics, included Scarface, Only Angels Have Wings, The Big Sleep and Monkey Business. Like his previous films Red River and The Big Sky, Rio Lobo, it is an ode to the Old West – a staunchly traditionalist tale of the frontier led by the genre’s biggest star. That’s not to everyone’s taste, but it is, for all its flaws, a highly watchable piece of cinema.
