Search - Red River on DVD

Content Advisory: Violence Movie Release: 1948 DVD Release: 11/19/1997 Format: DVD - Black and White,Pan and Scan Audio Tracks: English Subtitles: English, French, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 2 hrs 13 mins Studio: MGM Members Wishing: 10 Genres: Western, Epic Western

John Wayne -- showing off a darker side to his screen persona than we'd previously seen -- portrays Thomas Dunson, a frontiersman who, with his longtime partner Nadine Groot (Walter Brennan), leaves abandons a westbound wagon train in 1851 to make his future as a rancher in Texas. Doing so forces him to abandon Fen (Colleen Gray), his fiancee -- and when she is killed in an Indian raid a short time later, it taints any good that Dunson might find in the future he carves out for himself, destroying any joy he might derive from life. The sole survivor of the raid is Matthew Garth (Mickey Kuhn), a young orphan who is unusually handy with a gun for one his age -- and already knows how to channel his grief and horror at what he's seen, as much as Dunson does. Dunson informally adopts Matt as his son, and over the next 14 years he builds up one of the largest ranches in the entire state of Texas. And all of it is worth nothing, a result of the economic ruin wrought on the state in the aftermath of the Civil War. Matthew (Montgomery Clift, now back from the war and doing some of his own adventuring, finds a darker, more taciturn Dunson than he's ever known -- as Groot tells it, he afraid, because he just doesn't know how to fight the threats he now faces. With Matthew now returned, Dunson decides to move his herd, nearly 10,000 head of cattle, to Missouri, where there is a market for beef, over 1000 miles away through territory controlled by border gangs hundreds of men strong that have stopped every cattle drive up to now, and Indians who have picked off what the gangs missed. Dunson drives his men as hard as he does himself, relentlessly, till even some of his best hands break under the strain -- and he's not above killing anyone who challenges his authority on the drive. He's able to hold them in line as long as Matthew backs him up, and he does until Dunson, exhausted and worn down by lack of sleep, finally goes too far. Matthew steps in, backed by laconic, smirking gunman Cherry Valance (John Ireland) and most of the rest of the men and takes the herd from Dunson. Leaving his father and mentor behind, he heads the herd toward Kansas, where -- so the men are told -- there's a new railroad. Along the way, he meets Tess Millay (Joanne Dru), a card-dealer who falls in love with the young man. But he has to finish the drive and leaves her behind, much as Dunson left Fen. And they all know that Dunson is coming after Matthew to kill him. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

John Wayne - Tom Dunson
Montgomery Clift - Matthew Garth
Joanne Dru - Tess Millay
Walter Brennan - Nadine Groot
Coleen Gray - Fen

The changing perceptions about this DVD shows what has happened to the market for the format since it debuted in 1997. Howard Hawks' Red River was out twice on laserdisc before the producers got it to look right, and this DVD is visually superior to the best of those laser editions, at only 40% of the price. And that sounds like plenty, but it isn't. First, as an older (circa 1997) DVD release, the sound is lacking in volume and some richness compared to the best laser edition of this movie. Second, Red River was the first great postwar Western, and one of the best Westerns ever made, and it deserves some extras beyond the French and Spanish subtitles available here -- a trailer, at least, might have been nice and an audio commentary track would have been appropriate. There is so much in this film that later appears in other Hawks movies like Rio Bravo that it's worth looking at on that basis, if not for the range of actors and the complexity of the story and characters. Unfortunately, MGM/UA put this out in the days before there were special supplements on DVDs. It feels somewhat incongruous watching this film without any extras, when it's now common for even bad comedies to have their directors yammering away on the DVD secondary audio track. The film begs for it in this story about the first great cattle drive from Texas to Kansas after the Civil War, and about a man (John Wayne) whose stubborn nature helps get him (and nearly costs him) the biggest herd in Texas (as well as the life of the woman he loves and the man (Montgomery Clift) who could have been his son. It's a lot more than cowboys and Indians and cattle stampedes. This disc is the way to see the movie and, with a boost on an amplifier, the way to hear it, but a lot more could and should be done. Indeed, the makers could at least have included the shorter, 125-minute cut of the movie (the one Hawks approved for release, with narration by Walter Brennan), along with the now standard 133-minute pre-release version. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide