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Red River

1948

Howard Hawks, Arthur Rosson

John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Walter Brennan, Joanne Dru ...

7.8

12,827

Western Tom Dunson (John Wayne) builds a cattle empire with his adopted son Matthew Garth (Montgomery Clift). Together they begin a massive cattle drive north from Texas to the Missouri railhead. But on the way, new information and Dunson's tyrannical ways cause Matthew to take the herd away from Dunson and head to a new railhead in Kansas. Dunson, swearing vengeance, pursues.

	Author	Review
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"'Red River' is one of the greatest of all Westerns (...) Hawks is wonderful at setting moods (...) Watch the subtle way Hawks modulates Tom Dunson's gradual collapse (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Bosley Crowther The New York Times	"Hawks has used real Western scenery for its most vivid and picturesque effects (...) He has also got several fine performances out of a solidly masculine cast"	POS
United Kingdom	Philip French The Guardian	"It's a landmark film that brought a new psychological complexity to the genre and gave John Wayne the first truly challenging role of his career."	POS
United States	Dave Kehr Chicago Reader	"One of the few such projects in which the human element takes its rightful precedence over spectacle."	POS
United States	Variety	"Howard Hawks’ production and direction give a masterful interpretation to a story of the early west and the opening of the Chisholm Trail"	POS
United States	Jordan Cronk Slant	"The psychology behind the rebellion is expertly built and realized by Hawks (...) [It] shifted the moral viability of the western genre all at once (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Mike D'Angelo AV Club	"Great (...) The screenplay’s explicit filial conflict (...) works just fine."	POS
United States	Matt Brennan IndieWire	"That the narrative comes to its speedy and surprising end not in Missouri but in Abilene, Kansas (...) seems to me a perfect emblem of Hawks’ humane understanding that nothing is inevitable"	POS
United Kingdom	Tony Sloman Radio Times	"This magnificent western is one of the greatest achievements of American cinema (...) Howard Hawks created a rich masterpiece that repays frequent viewings."	POS
United Kingdom	Kim Newman Empire	"Beautifully directed with a lovely visual lyricism, this film packs a western punch with perfect performances and a fine script (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Richard Brody The New Yorker	"This is the measure of Hawks’s remarkable intelligence: he sees relations between people in terms of a remarkable density of implicit angles, of psychological force fields."	POS

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Red River

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