Jack Elam and Jennifer O’Neill co-star in Howard Hawks’ 1970 western.
Watching Rio Lobo, the final collaboration of superstar John Wayne and veteran filmmaker Howard Hawks, is a bit like being told by a longtime friend a familiar story that neither of you ever tire of hearing. Only better.
The 1970 Western — Hawks’ swan song as a director — showcases Wayne as Cord McNally, a Civil War veteran who joins forces with two former Confederate enemies (Jorge Rivero, Christopher Mitchum) to battle land-grabbing varmints in the Texas town of Rio Lobo. Co-stars include Jack Elam, Jennifer O’Neill — and Sherry Lansing, who would later become the first woman ever to head a major Hollywood studio (20th Century Fox).
If the plot of Rio Lobo seems a tad familiar, well, that’s because it is. As critic Roger Ebert noted: “We go to a classic John Wayne western not to see anything new, but to see the old done again, done well, so that we can sink into the genre and feel confident we won’t be betrayed. To some degree Wayne movies are rituals, and so it is fitting that they resemble each other. El Dorado was a remake of Hawks’ Rio Bravo (1958), and Rio Lobo draws from both of them. (It is said that when Hawks called Wayne and offered to send over the script, Wayne replied, ‘Why bother? I’ve already made the movie twice.’)”
Jack Elam, more or less playing the same sort of crotchety character essayed by Walter Brennan in Rio Bravo, arguably has the best line in the entire movie, in response to a question about an inconvenient bad guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time: “He's at another gate now, waiting for Saint Peter.” But The Duke is close behind, with his remark about the upside of having an unexpected sleeping companion.
