Red River is undoubtably one of Howard Hawks' best and most accomplished westerns, and for the length of its running time, this dark and broody story of a cattle drive - and the rivalry between the two men tasked with the job - is cinema at its best. The men are John Wayne and Montgomery Clift, a father and his adopted son, whose relationship begins to break down over the course of their long and arduous journey. At the climax of the movie, we know that one of these two men will have to die: it's been coming the whole time, a storm brewing on the horizon. And then the only one and only bad scene in the whole movie suddenly rolls itself out: just at the point at which these two battered souls look to go up against one another, Tess, an unnecessarily female character introduced after the movie's halfway point, breaks the two men up, tells them off, to which they all end up laughing as the credits roll. And yet Tess hasn't earned the right to play such an important part. The scene stinks of studio compromise, weak when compared to the the dark and rightful ending inherent to the story on which Red River was based. What a shame.
