Famously made and inspired by director Howard Hawks' and actor John Wayne's contempt for the western High Noon, Rio Bravo similarly features a frontier lawman waiting on pins and needles until someone can arrive. In High Noon it was the bad guys. In Rio Bravo the bad guys are already in town, it's the U.S. Marshall the sheriff is waiting for. But make no mistake about it. That's nearly all these two movies have in common. High Noon was a dark, cold, and desolate black and white six-shooter melodrama and political commentary. Rio Bravo is a warm, exciting, joyous, and bright technicolor ode to male camaraderie and the old west. Howard Hawks' film contains all of his trademarks. Hard drinking men, fast talking women, enough hidden sexual innuendo to get you kicked out of Church, and of course the dialogue. Sharp, funny, and biting. John Wayne was in fact never much of a talker. He's no Cary Grant. But he is the Duke. Hawks' surrounds him with a colorful assortment of characters to react to and interact with, which is when Wayne is in his element. Walter Brennan is the yappy and big mouthed old codger, Dean Martin is the down-on-his-luck drunk, Angie Dickinson is the insecure but headstrong gambling dance hall girl, and Ricky Nelson is the quiet but youthful rebel gunfighter. Those are the main characters. Ward Bond offers good support as a do-gooder cattle rancher. Pedro Gonzales-Gonzales provides plenty of comic relief as the hen-pecked and stereotypical Mexican who runs the hotel and acts as a go-between for Dickinson and Wayne and their uncertain romantic relationship. Each of them too proud to express their true feelings and emotions. John Russell fills the shoes of the villain, a rich and ruthless cattle baron who hires men to do his killing for him - 50 silver dollars a head. Russell sees very little screen time, but other than the fact that his character is there and we the audience know he's there and so do the characters, he doesn't serve any real purpose. In fact he functions in a similar fashion to what Hitchcock describes as the Maguffin. The good guys need somebody to fight against and he's it. But that's just an excuse to get the ensemble together and have them talk, talk, talk, and then talk some more. You'd be hard pressed to find a movie with more masculine male-bonding and men being men than what's in Rio Bravo. The movie is comprised of one classic scene and entertaining moment after the other. Angie Dickinson throwing the flower vase through the window, the gang sitting around and singing "My Rifle, My Pony, and Me", the seven minute opening without a word of dialogue, Dean Martin pouring the whiskey from the glass back into the bottle, John Wayne going up to see Dickinson at the film's conclusion, and on and on and on. Great story, great script, great acting, beautifully shot. What more could you ask for?