Format: DVD from NetFlix on kick-ass portable DVD player.
I don’t love Westerns. I don’t dislike them specifically, but I rarely want to watch one. I suppose that this is something I have in common with most modern film viewers. The Western genre seems like one that hangs around at the edges of consciousness, with a couple coming out every year. Every now and then, one will pop up into the mainstream only to quickly fall away, taking the rest of the genre with it. While Westerns will never disappear forever, I think it’s safe to say that their heyday is gone and gone for good. I need to will myself to watch a lot of Westerns unless they are ones I’ve seen before and know I like. Red River is one I had to force myself to watch, and sometimes had to remind myself to keep watching.
Oh, this isn’t a bad film. It’s just a very standard horse-and-saddle picture with a few very weird conclusions drawn at the end. It’s a morally vague picture that never intended to be morally vague, I think. At least now, 65 years after it was filmed, the moral lessons of this film are decidedly sketchy. The other thing is that this is a story I’ve seen played out before. It’s really little more than Mutiny on the Bounty with horses and cows and a different ending. But mostly, the reason my mind wandered at times and I had to jump back to pieces I’d zoned out over is that this is a film that telegraphs where it’s going minutes before it gets there. There’s no Western or film cliché that this film starts that it doesn’t finish right on cue.
