RIO GRANDE

This is the final film in John Ford’s ‘cavalry trilogy’, but I prefer to think of it as the second, if they are ordered chronologically by the stage John Wayne has reached in his cavalry career in each one.

In this film Wayne plays Kirby Yorke, a world-weary soldier whose lonely existence is shaken up by the arrival of both his son and his estranged wife, neither of whom he has seen for many years.

John Ford only made this film because the studio ordered him to do so and maybe that explains why the action scenes, such as they are, are routine bordering on desultory. The climactic rescue of a group of children from a Native American camp should be way more exciting than it is.

In the absence of thrills we have to fall back on the unusual interrelationships within the Yorke family.

Whilst I struggled to care much about the father-son relationship, John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara can always be relied upon to deliver, and together they pretty much carry this sub-standard Ford Western.

RATING: x Find Something Better To Do