Red River is a John Wayne movie about a cattle drive and it wasn't terrible, actually. I kind of liked it. John Wayne plays this tragic hero-type character and Montgomery Clift is his adopted son, and there's some themes about loyalty and making the same mistakes generation after generation and that sort of thing. It is a western and a half it is. Lot's of choir in the background and completely unnecessary narration. It's not actually narration, though - they've written it down, and just filmed the text. I did not care for it. It was the only thing that struck me as, you know, stupid, so I thought the film stood up well. So far I'm liking John Wayne. He was charming in Stagecoach, and here he played a very complex, largely unsympathetic character. I'm impressed.
Most of the cast of the movie was good, actually. There were characters I could tell apart and liked and there were cowboys who flirted with each other (This is apparently a common motif). It was great.
There was also a cattle stampede, and since the movie was made in 48,m I suspect they filmed it by provoking an actual heard of cattle to actually stampede. For art.
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