Rio Bravo (1959)

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General		Extras
Category	Western	Main Menu Audio Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1959
Running Time	135:14
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (50:44)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Howard Hawks
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	John Wayne Dean Martin Ricky Nelson Angie Dickinson Walter Brennan Ward Bond John Russell Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez Estelita Rodriguez
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$34.95	Music	Dimitri Tiomkin

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 1.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 1.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 1.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French Italian Dutch Arabic Spanish Portuguese German Romanian Bulgarian English for the Hearing Impaired Italian for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Rio Bravo is another western from Director Howard Hawks, who is better known for his earlier work with Red River. I found Rio Bravo to be a quiet western that focused solely on one town and a few main characters that lived in it. There were no scenes involving wide open vistas, or roaming across the countryside on horseback and not once did I hear John Wayne mention the word "pilgrims". Although it was not a "classic" in my eyes like Red River is, it still made for good entertainment.

    The story begins with Dude (Dean Martin), an ex-deputy turned drunk walking into a saloon to try and lay his hands on some cheap liquor. Dude gets into an altercation with Joe, one of the town cowboys and an all-round bad guy. The Sheriff, John T. Chance (John Wayne), who tries to break up the fight only gets himself hit across the head with a plank of timber. When one of the other drinkers at the bar also tries to stop the fight, he suffers an even worse fate and is shot dead by Joe.

    Joe heads over to another saloon, presumably because he doesn't feel comfortable drinking with a dead body lying on the floor, and is soon followed by the Sheriff who arrests him for murder. Now that the all-round bad guy is behind bars, his brother Nathan and his army of gunmen are dead-set on springing Joe from jail. The Sheriff needs to hold out until the US Marshal arrives, which is a six day ride away. The bad guys have sealed up the town so that no one can get in or out of town. And, to make matters worse, all the Sheriff has helping him to maintain law and order is Dude the drunk and Stumpy (Walter Brennan), a game-legged old man.

    Stumpy was quite a humorous character, lightening the mood of the movie during several scenes quite well. I found that the young gun-slinger played by Colorado (Ricky Nelson), whose role doesn't come to the fore until later on in the movie, became a personal favourite character of mine. Rio Bravo was the first major film he starred in, and he did an excellent job. His quiet speaking manner and laid-back style gave the impression that he was someone who could be counted on when things started to get rough.

    Rio Bravo is not a typical Cowboys and Indians style of movie, but it was quite enjoyable and easy to watch (even when Dean Martin breaks into song).

Video

    Surprisingly for its age (1959), this movie had a better transfer than some of the more recent DVDs I have reviewed lately.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1. It is 16x9 enhanced.

    The image transfer was very clear and sharp throughout. This just goes to show that with a little attention to detail, movies of all ages can receive an incredible quality transfer. Shadow detail is good, with quite a large amount of detail revealed in the murky lighting of the jail cell and saloon bars. There is no noticeable low level noise.

    The colours were deliberately muted and drab which can be expected for a movie of this age and style. There were no irregularities with the colour rendition of this transfer - just don't expect any splashes of bright, primary colours, since there aren't any.

    There were no MPEG artefacts or aliasing that I noticed, other than some quite noticeable aliasing on Angie Dickinson's suit jacket at 32:52. There were film artefacts scattered throughout the movie, but I did not find them distracting. They were usually comprised of a hair or other small object. The largest of these were at 16:14, 21:50 and 67:29.

    The subtitles were accurate to the spoken word. The subtitles also included an English for the Hearing Impaired subtitle track. For those not familiar with the difference between these and ordinary English subtitles, Hearing Impaired subtitles annotate sound effects such as the actors' sighs, whistling and so forth along with the dialogue.

    This disc is an RSDL-formatted disc, with the layer change placed between chapters at 50:44. It is well placed and was not disruptive to the flow of the movie.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The dialogue was clear and easy to understand at all times with no apparent hiss.

    There was only one section where I noticed an audio sync problem, at 5:57, when Chance was speaking. It was brief and then didn't seem to happen again.

    The musical score by Dimitri Tiomkin was your typical slow western theme that was quite a catchy tune. The action sequences tended to have a lot of background music and came across quite loudly. The only criticism I would have of the music is that at times during the action sequences, I felt that the level could have been a little lower. The range between the base dialogue and the action sounds was too broad for my liking and occasionally I reached for the remote to adjust back to a comfortable listening level.

    As this was a mono track, the surround channels and subwoofer slept through the entire movie.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Text/Photo Galleries
• Cast & Crew Filmographies

• Nothing

    There is nothing compelling here to favour one version over the other.

    Rio Bravo was not your typical Cowboys and Indians movie, and even though the plot was rather thin, it was still enjoyable.

    I think the rather high quality of the video transfer made it easier to watch. The audio could have been better balanced between the loudest and quietest sequences, however.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall