Rio Bravo
Warner Bros. | Release Date: April 4, 1959 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
93
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 18 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago ReaderDave Kehr
It's American filmmaking at its finest—clean, clear, and direct—and it's also the most optimistic masterpiece on film, valiantly shoring fragments against human ruin. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
To watch Rio Bravo is to see a master craftsman at work. The film is seamless. There is not a shot that is wrong. It is uncommonly absorbing, and the 141-minute running time flows past like running water. Read full review
100
LarsenOnFilmJosh Larsen
Directed by Howard Hawks, Rio Bravo has its fair share of gunfights and saloon showdowns (including a bravura opening confrontation that unfolds with barely any words). Yet the film resembles other Westerns less than it does Hawks’ snappy romances, such as Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, and To Have and Have Not. Read full review
100
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
Rio Bravo is an excellent film featuring strong, proud, but very human characters who fight against their various handicaps and pull together to do a job and do it right. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Rio Bravo features characters who form a familial bond while performing an impossible task in the face of death. It is, in other words, a Howard Hawks movie. It's a great one, too, and if it's not Hawks' best, it's certainly the most Hawksian. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Bravo shines with humor and character. [28 Jul 2006, p.C10]
100
EmpireWilliam Thomas
Faultless, freewheeling-and very funny. Read full review
100
The GuardianTony Paley
Over the course of Rio Bravo we are treated to an entertainment masterclass, a high watermark of Hollywood cinema in its heyday. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterDuane Byrge
Directed by Howard Hawks with his sly sidearm grace, this is top-of-the-genre stuff. Read full review
100
USA TodayMike Clark
Another great 1950s John Wayne Western from Warner Bros. [25 May 2007, p.4E]
90
Film ThreatBradley Gibson
It still has everything a viewer could want from a movie experience. Read full review
90
The New YorkerRichard Brody
The movie is simultaneously an apogee of the classic Western style, with its principled violence in defense of just law, and an eccentrically hyperbolic work of modernism, which yokes both bumptious erotic comedy and soul-searing rawness to the mission. Read full review
90
Time OutStaff (Not Credited)
Beautifully acted, wonderfully observed, and scripted with enormous wit and generosity, it's the sort of film, in David Thomson's words, which reveals that 'men are more expressive rolling a cigarette than saving the world'. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesJeff Shannon
Hawks drew from his entire career to enliven this amalgam of genre traditions, once favored by Quentin Tarantino as a litmus test for potential girlfriends. [26 Oct 2003]
80
VarietyStaff (Not Credited)
Producer-director Howard Hawks makes handsome use of force in logically unravelling his hard-hitting narrative, creating suspense at times and occasionally inserting lighter moments to give variety. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
With an unnecessarily protracted running length of more than 140 minutes, Rio Bravo at times moves too slowly for its own good but the climax is as rousing as that of any Western made during the decade when the genre was at its peak. Read full review
70
The New YorkerPauline Kael
Silly, but with zest; there are some fine action sequences, and the performers seem to be enjoying their roles.
60
The New York TimesA. H. Weiler
Despite its slickness, virility, occasional humor and, if it may be repeated, authentic professional approach, it is well-made but awfully familiar fare. Read full review
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