The movie is simultaneously an apogee of the classic Western style, with its principled violence in defense of just law, and an eccentrically hyperbolic work of modernism, which yokes both bumptious erotic comedy and soul-searing rawness to the mission.

| Apr 23, 2013

To watch Rio Bravo is to see a master craftsman at work. The film is seamless. There is not a shot that is wrong. It is uncommonly absorbing, and the 141-minute running time flows past like running water.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 23, 2013

Wayne, of course, walks off with the show -- not by doing anything in particular, but simply by being what he is: at 51, still one of the most believable he-men in Hollywood.

| Apr 27, 2009

Rio Bravo is a big, brawling western.

| May 13, 2008

Faultless, freewheeling-and very funny.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 13, 2008

Howard Hawks's finest western (1959), and perhaps his finest film.

| May 13, 2008

Despite its slickness, virility, occasional humor and, if it may be repeated, authentic professional approach, it is well-made but awfully familiar fare.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 25, 2006

Arguably Hawks' greatest film.

| Feb 9, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 20, 2003

A comic western that ambles through its two hours and 21 minutes, it always has time to pause for a joke, a song or banter among the characters.

| Jan 1, 2000