Reeling Backward: "Red River" (1948)

Plantin' and readin'. Plantin' and readin'. Fill a man full of lead, stick him in the ground, and then read words at him. Why, when you kill a man, why try to read the Lord in as a partner on the job?

                                                           --Simms Reeves

I love it when screenwriters give some of the best dialogue to minor characters. That's a hallmark of 1948's "Red River," directed by Howard Hawks and starring John Wayne, Montgomery Clift and Walter Brennan. It's a big picture with an intimate feel, not to mention one of the darkest-themed Westerns of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Frequent Wayne collaborator John Ford is said to have remarked after seeing the film, "I didn’t know the big son of a bitch could act!"

Personally, I think "The Searchers" was the apotheosis of the grimmer side of Wayne's star persona, but "Red River" certainly deserves a spot among his better performances.

The quote above comes from the frequent Western player Hank Worden, known for his stick frame, bald head and high moan of a voice. It's a reference to Wayne's character, pioneer cattleman Thomas Dunson, who has a habit of shooting dead anybody who opposes him, including his own cowboys, but always insisting upon a proper burial and Bible reading the morning after.

All his killings seem to conveniently take place in the evening so as not to interrupt the massive cattle drive he's currently undertaking from Texas to Missouri. The story is a fictionalized version of the first major drive in 1865 on the Chisholm Trail, which actually goes to Kansas. (More on that in a minute.)

Dunson has spent the better part of the last 15 years building up the largest beef herd in all of Texas, only to find himself destitute with no market for his cattle. So he resolves to drive 10,000 head 1,000 miles to Missouri. He doesn't even have enough cash to pay his men, only the promise of triple pay if and when they should reach the market.

"Red River" is chockablock with interesting side characters and throwaway lines of dialogue. Screenwriters Borden Chase and Charles Schnee received an Oscar nomination for their story, based on Chase's story in the Saturday Evening Post. It contains the usual Western tropes of six-shooter duels, marauding Indians and womenfolk tempting cowboys to leave the trail in favor of more civilized town life.

The other Academy Award nod was for Christian Nyby's editing, which may literally have saved the film from extinction. Originally shot in 1946, "Red River" wasn't released until two years later as Hawks sought to tighten the narrative, and also was sued by Howard Hughes, who thought the finale too similar to his from "The Outlaw." Brennan recorded a narration which was used to replace written journal entries that pop up from time to time, but that cut of the film was lost for decades until it was reassembled from the Criterion Collection release a few years ago.

The version I saw is not that one, and still includes the journal pop-ups, which as Hawks feared are fleeting and difficult to read.

Brennan plays Groot (!), another in a long line of cantankerous oldsters in his repertoire. He's more sensible than some of his other soft-headed characters, showing fierce loyalty to Dunson but only up to a point. The story opens with just the two of them breaking off from a wagon train to stake their own claim across the Red River in Texas.

Dunson leaves behind a bountiful lass (Coleen Gray) who pretty well throws herself at him, insisting he take her along, but the lonesome prairie is no place for a woman and all that. He gives her his mother's bracelet as a promise to send for her, but hours later the pioneers are massacred by Indians, one of who wears the trinket as a prize.

Consigned to lifelong bachelorhood (read: cantankerous chastity), Dunson takes a young boy who escaped the attack, Matt Garth, as his ward and heir apparent. He admires that the lad, shell-shocked by the killing of his family, still has the wherewithal to pull a pint-sized gun on Dunson when he slaps the boy to his senses.

"He'll do," Dunson mutters to Groot in admiration.

Years later Matt has just returned from the Civil War a seasoned leader and gunfighter. Dunson appoints him trail master of 30 or so cowpunchers, with Groot driving the chuck wagon. As the trail goes on and the troubles pile up, Dunson becomes increasingly dictatorial and hard-handed, shooting several deserters or would-be mutineers.

Matt, now played by Montgomery Clift, obediently knuckles under and keeps the men (mostly) in line. But when one lunkheaded idjit (Ivan Parry) causes a stampede by clanking some pots while stealing some sugar, resulting in the death of one man and 300 lost head, Dunson insists on whipping the transgressor. When the man refuses to accept this debasement, Matt shoots him in the shoulder to prevent the boss from giving him one between the eyes.

Soon Dunson is barely sleeping and drinking all the time, a paranoid petty tyrant of the plains.

Things finally come to a head when Dunson wants to hang some deserters, and Matt opposes him, essentially leading an ad-hoc mutiny. The older man vows to catch up to Matt and kill him, and for the rest of the movie the audience is looking over his shoulder right along with him.

They finally make it to Abilene, turning west to avoid the bandits attacking every cattle drive, and because they heard there's a new railroad stop there. There Matt again meets up with Tess Millay (Joanne Dru), a plucky gal and member of another wagon train the boys saved from Indians along the way, and they fall hard for each other.

(Including the usual heavily-implied but in-no-way-depicted sex.)

The final showdown between Dunson and Matt is energetic, if a little soft-headed. Dunson has recruited a dozen or so hard gunmen to accompany him, but then insists on a mano-e-mano face-off with Matt. Matt refuses to draw his gun, even when Dunson shoots his hat off and grazes his cheek. I loved Clift's surly, sneering defiance in this scene.

They trade guns for fists, until the scuffle is broken up by Tess when she holds them both at gunpoint and essentially forces them to hug it out. Dunson's fevered spell is immediately broken, and he's back to smiles and treating Matt as his adopted son.

This doesn't really play for me. If Dunson never intended to kill Matt, then why round up a crew and come after him? In the original published story, Dunson is slain by Cherry Valance (John Ireland), a deadly gun they took on at the start of the drive. But a movie can't end with John Wayne gunned down -- at least not unless it's his last film, "The Shootist," which coincidentally this film uses footage from in the flashback scenes.

Cherry is the darkling yang to Matt's yin, both skilled gunfighters with a lot of bravado and grit. In an early scene, they trade pistols and impress each other with some sharpshooting.

It seems destined that the two will eventually come to blows and/or bullets -- several other characters make this observation explicitly -- but interestingly, they never do, forming a grudging friendship. I would have loved to seen a sequel where the pair light out for some adventures of their own.

A few other notables from the cast:

• Harry Carey Sr. plays the friendly businessman in town eager to scoop up the beef, and his son Jr. is the unfortunate cowboy who got squished in the stampede. His dream was to buy his wife a pair of red shoes, which is a pretty meager dream.

• Shelley Winters has one of her earliest screen roles (uncredited) as a dance hall girl. Ditto for Richard Farnsworth, playing a background cowboy.

• Chief Yowlachie plays Quo, an Indian scout who wins a poker hand against Groot in which he has staked a 50 percent interest in his set of false teeth. I loved his line, "From now on, I will be known as Two Jaw Quo." He lets the cook have his teeth back for eating, but otherwise carries them around in a little pouch like a totem.

"Red River" is a mighty fine-looking picture, with a lot of lush scenes of the American prairie. Although I would've loved to see a version of this movie shot a few years later with Technicolor and CinemaScope. Hawks skillfully maneuvers his camera to make a herd of cattle number maybe a few hundred to resemble 10,000, though I admit it gets a little old watching a parade of hooves go by. In one memorable shot, he pans his camera 360 degrees around the ranch.

Originally just seen as another workaday Western, the reputation of "Red River" has grown with the years, and was even named the fifth-best ever of its genre by the American Film Institute. That's a bit over the top, methinks, but it's definitely a surprisingly hard-bitten tale that rides high in the saddle.

Reeling Backward: "Big Jake" (1971)

This is the second of my first-ever Reeling Backward "double feature," looking at a pair of back-to-back Westerns John Wayne made during his declining years. You can read the column on "Rio Lobo" by clicking here. The two films have been paired together in a nice Blu-ray release that's now available.

Thematically and stylistically, "Rio Lobo" and "Big Jake" share a lot of space. Wayne plays essentially the same role: a cussedly good-natured cowboy who's on the downside of his long run in the saddle, still throwing his weight around to protect his reputation but also do some good if he can.

He plays Jake McCandles, the estranged patriarch of a wealthy ranching family along the Texas-Mexico border in 1909. It's never explained why he's out riding the lonesome range with his dog, whom he addresses simply as "Dog," rather than overseeing the ranch with his wife, Martha (Maureen O'Hara, still a stunner at 51), his three sons and the grandson he's never met.

Based on his antagonistic interactions with Martha and the boys, and the classic John Wayne archetype, it's a combination of ill feelings and Jake's inbred desire to roam free and clear.

Shot in vivid widescreen Technicolor by director George Sherman, "Big Jake" nonetheless very much has a television feel to it, as did "Lobo." There's a spare economy of storytelling and characterizations, as if all that exists of these people and this land is bookended within the film's 109 minutes.

In a good movie, we should always feel as if the characters have wandered in from other things they were doing and places they were going, which they'll return to after the credits roll.

(Assuming they survive, this being a rootin', tootin', shootin' Western.)

Like "Lobo," Wayne provided another send-off to a director making his last feature film. Obviously Sherman doesn't have the reputation or gallery of awards of Howard Hawks, but the journeyman directed or produced a number of notable films from the 1930s through the '70s, including several with Wayne like "The Commancheros."

I remain flabbergasted how "Rio Lobo" received a "G" rating from the nascent MPAA. "Big Jake" contains about the same amount of violence and blood -- still very orange-y -- but lacks the semi-nudity and sexual innuendo. Yet it received the harsher "GP" rating (later changed to PG).

The story of "Big Jake" is quite simple: a group of bandits led by John Fain (well-creased frequent villain Richard Boone) rides up to the McCandles ranch one day, shoots a bunch of people dead and kidnaps Martha's grandson, "Little Jake," played by Wayne's real-life son, Ethan. In the process Little Jake's son, played by singer Bobby Vinton, is badly shot up, though his two younger brothers remained safe, away with the herd.

Fain's Gang leaves a note demanding $1 million in ransom in $20 bills, with the bearer to proceed along a trail on a map provided until they are met. Martha must decide between sending the U.S. Army or Texas Rangers to carry the ransom, but also sends word to Big Jake, who ends up taking on the assignment personally.

How anyone knew where to find him is left a mystery -- another example of the poor internal logic often associated with TV writing. The script was by the Fink screenwriting couple, Harry Julian and Rita M., best known for the "Have Gun -- Will Travel" Western series and the "Dirty Harry" movies.

Much is made in the movie of the split between the Old West and the more civilized East, with a long narrated intro contrasting the high society developments in New York or whatnot with the life on the still-young frontier remaining very much under the boot heel of hard men with guns.

The Rangers travel by automobile these days, and there's a big Keystone Cops-style scene where Fain's Gang shoots the clankety machines to pieces, leaving the lawmen stranded. They hadn't even thought to bring enough water to drink. Jake catches up with his train of spare horses, allowing his other two sons, who had gone with the Rangers, to join up.

The elder McCandles son, hothead James, is played by another of Wayne's real-life offspring, Patrick. The younger, cooler Michael, who favors a motorcycle until it's smashed up, is again played by Christopher Mitchum (son of Robert), who also appeared in "Rio Lobo."

James is constantly antagonizing Jake, calling him "Daddy" when he wants to annoy him, and repeatedly blaming him for running out on the family. Michael is more polite and obedient, though he occasionally pisses off the man he calls "Father," too. Jake lays down several rounds of smack on the both of them.

Also tagging along is Sam Sharpnose, an old Apache tracker played by Bruce Cabot (who looks about as Native American as me). There's a nice scene where the two old gunmen privately share their newfound affinity for Greener shotguns, as they've grown mostly blind at distance.

Other nods to modernity are the weapons used in the film. Jake relies on his scattergun and six-shooter, but Michael favors a bolt-action rifle with a scope, and has to duel with an adversary using a similar weapon. Michael also produces a pistol he calls a "1911," an early semiautomatic that is shown firing at high (nearly uncontrollable) speed. He later hands this over to James, who uses it to take out several bandits.

(The 1911 reference is confusing, as the famous M1911 wasn't issued until that year.  The Internet Movie Firearm Database lists the weapon used in the movie as a Walther P-38 dressed up to look like a Bergmann 1896.)

Fain's Gang is a colorful mix of crusty characters. Interestingly, the villains are actually introduced at the very start of the film, with each man getting a little mini-bio from the narrator, while Wayne doesn't even show up till the 20-minute mark.

The two gang members who make the biggest impressions are Harry Carey Jr. as Pop Dawson, the wily old coot of the bunch, and John Goodfellow (Greg Palmer), a grizzly mountain of a man who favors finishing off his victims with a machete, slashing them repeatedly with an orgiastic fervor we'd later see in the forthcoming slasher film genre.

I feel much about "Big Jake" as I do about "'Rio Lobo." Neither deserves a high place in the John Wayne canon, though they're decent, fast-paced Westerns with a lot of entertainment value.

I was surprised again how much Wayne smiles throughout the movie, despite playing a character whose orneriness is supposed to be his defining trait. The old cowboy actor couldn't hide his joy at doing what he did best.

Reeling Backward: "Rio Lobo" (1970)

Even in 1970, "Rio Lobo" was something of an outdated relic.

It was the final film directed by Howard Hawks, made during John Wayne's post-"True Grit" period of diminishing returns, with only his final film, 1976's "The Shootist," really standing out in his filmography. (What, you don't recall "McQ" from '74?)

The following year he would make "Big Jake," another "last" picture for its director, George Sherman, which also featured a revenge/payback theme. That's actually a throughline in Wayne's final decade of films, as his characters generally react to the wrongdoing of others, rather than seeking out trouble like his younger cowboys would.

("Jake" and "Lobo" have been released together as a Blu-ray set, so I'll be featuring them next to each other in this series.)

Hawks and Wayne had of course paired up together before, for "Rio Bravo" in 1959, which was a deliberate cinematic retort to "High Noon" with a very similar plot, and for "El Dorado" in 1966, which was essentially a remake of the same formula with some of the actors around Wayne swapped out.

"Rio Lobo" has been called the third remake/response to "High Noon," which would seem to show the depth of how miffed Hawks and Wayne were at it. I don't really think that description holds water, though, as this is a light-hearted adventure story about former Civil War enemies teaming up to overthrow a corrupt sheriff and his rich landowner boss.

In this telling, Wayne and his fellows are the dangerous interlopers riding into the eponymous town -- and nobody's fretting about their coming.

The story is straight as an arrow: while seeking out the traitors who sold information to the Rebs during the war, former Union Col. Cord McNally (Wayne) follows the clues to the fictional Texas town, where everyone lives in fear for their lives of the brutal sheriff and his crew -- though not enough, apparently, for anyone to leave.

Of course, it turns out one of the deputies and the land baron were the traitors, so McNally gets to play the hero while getting his payback. His allies are Pierre Cordon, a French/Mexican Confederate captain played by Jorge Rivero, and Cordon's wily sergeant, Tuscarora Phillips (Christopher Mitchum, son of Robert).

The trio tangled at the tail end of the war, and it was actually the Rebs who killed McNally's beloved lieutenant while stealing a shipment of gold. But the good colonel figures those were acts of war performed in the line of duty, and they're soon sharing drinks and good cheer. He wants the pair who sold them the information about the shipments. The former Confederate soldiers know only the faces but not the names.

They also pick up Shasta Delaney (Jennifer O'Neill) along the way, who's a much more self-assured female than we're used to seeing in Westerns. She bosses McNally and Cordon around, not merely accepting the latter's romantic interest but actually directing it according to her whims.

Shasta gets a nice speech about what it's like to be a woman living on the frontier, constantly being pawed by men who think they have rights to her body. I kept thinking about how we never would have heard this sort of thing in a Hollywood movie even 10 years earlier. It plays as a prescient #MeToo moment by today's lights.

Her husband was killed -- he was a lout; she wasn't exactly sad about it -- and after some saloon work, Shasta hooked up with a traveling snake oil salesman, a kindly older gent who treated her like a father. But then they wandered into Rio Lobo, he was killed and she found herself being pursued by Deputy Whitey Carter (Robert Donner), an albino who is one of the aforementioned gropers.

Once they get to Rio Lobo, they find the sheriff, "Blue Tom" Hendricks (stalwart footballer-turned-actor Mike Henry), has a veritable army tracking everyone's moves within the town. They soon learn that Ketcham (Victor French) is the money behind the stink, forcing people to sell their land at a fraction of its value. He was formerly known as Sgt. Ike Gorman, when he was selling information to the Rebs.

Meanwhile, Tuscarora is taken captive by the sheriff, so McNally and his team head over to his father's place to recruit help. Played by famously googly-eyed character actor Jack Elam, the senior Phillips is a rootin', tootin' old hellion whose standard policy is to fire off his scattergun at strangers and ask questions later.

Soon the forces converge for the reckoning, which will involve a lot of shooting and taunts.

It's a good-looking, entertaining but rather disposable film. It does stand out for me in a few ways:

• It's one of the most purely plot-driven movies I've ever seen. There's literally no fat in the story, written by Burton Wohl and the legendary Leigh Brackett. Every scene, line of dialogue and character advances the plot in some way. The characters lack any sort of depth outside of their role in the unfolding story. Example: what does McNally do when he's not a Union colonel or hunting traitors? We have no idea.

• The women are surprisingly sexually frisky. In addition to Cordon's romance with Shasta, he also barges in on sweet young thing Amelita, finding her half-dressed while he's on the run from the deputies. She doesn't seem put out by this, and indeed appears ready to bed the stranger right then and there. Later, she gets her face cut up for assisting McNally & Co. Amelita is played by Sherry Lansing, a math teacher-turned-model who was trying her hand at acting. Lansing only made one other movie and, dissatisfied with her own skills as an actor, learned the business from the ground up and became arguably the most successful female producer in Hollywood history.

• The film is rather tawdry and violent for its G rating from the relatively new MPAA, which started labeling movies two years earlier. In addition to the partial nudity and innuendo mentioned above, a number of people are shot, with the DayGlo orange blood that was favored during that era spilling generously. One person even has his rifle explode on him, ripping his face and hands to bloody shreds. Today it would surely receive a PG-13 rating. Obviously, the concept of what constituted a "general audience" was still rather nebulous in 1970.

• This is as relaxed a role you'll ever see John Wayne in. He's constantly smiling and allowing himself to be the butt of the jokes, as when Shasta chooses to snuggle up to him instead of Cordon when the bed down on the trail because he's old and sexually nonthreatening. McNally even starts joshingly referring to himself as "comfortable," borrowing her phrase. Even when he's engaged in a shootout with the bad guys, he never seems particularly perturbed about it. For an actor whose roles were often defined by rage, it's a breath of fresh air.

In his early 60s when they shot the film, Wayne still cuts an impressive figure. As in all of his later roles, he constantly wears a jacket or leather vest to try to hide his belly, and the longer toupee he adopted in the 1960s sits lankly on his head like a dead gopher. But Wayne still has that twinkle in his eye, the rapscallion smile, the stern voice that made many an ornery assailant take a step back all on its own.

John Wayne had one of the most remarkable film careers, a star for 40 years without ever experiencing a dramatic dip in his popularity. Sure, his last few rides around the trail were more nostalgia tours than anything else. But he deserved those last laps, and "Rio Lobo" is a decent send-off for one of the great directors.

Reeling Backward: "Angel and the Badman" (1947)

"Angel and the Badman" is regarded as one of the signature films in the John Wayne library, but it doesn't deserve to be.

It's a rather stiff and unoriginal Western, filled out with an insipid female lead and clichéd supporting cast, containing zero surprises in the plot. Wayne plays Quirt Evans, a legendary bandit who tries to go straight after he's taken in, healed and befriended by a family of Quakers. Of course, he falls in love with the daughter, Penelope (Gail Russell), setting off a whole lot of 'am-I-good-enough' perambulations.

The villains have generic cowboy names, Laredo (Bruce Cabot) and Hondo (Louis Faust), and they came straight off the Central Casting Express. We're never even really sure what their conflict with Quirt is about -- something to do with claiming a piece of land Laredo wanted. Later, Quirt and a pal rustle some cattle that Laredo & Co. had just rustled, setting up the final showdown where Quirt must choose between resorting to violence or the love of a good woman.

Penny is so pure, so devoted to Quirt and such a straightforward depiction of the 1940s feminine ideal that she's a total bore. To wit: I have no more words to spare for her.

It's your typical John Wayne flick: He's taller than everybody else, louder than everybody, all the women are crazy for him, all the men feel a combination of hate and envy, wanting to either kill him or befriend him. He takes guff from no man, though he'll knuckle under to an appropriately maternal figure if there's flapjacks and sausage in the offing.

Wayne is the epitome of the old saw about the difference between a movie star and an actor: He always plays himself. That's fine, but watching the movie for the first time, I felt like I'd already seen it a hundredfold.

John Halloran plays the Quaker dad, Mr. Worth, who sort of reminded me of a smaller, gentler version of Rory McCann, the actor who plays The Hound in the "Game of Thrones" series. Irene Rich is Mother Worth, Stephen Grant plays the scrappy younger brother whose name (of course!) is Johnny.

Olin Howland plays the nervous-nelly telegraph operator, who brags about being a close friend of Quirt's despite having just met him, which of course brings the black hats around for a visit. Tom Powers portrays Dr. Mangram, the atheist doctor who comes by to tend to Quirt and spare a little philosophy with Mrs. Worth. He advises her to give Quirt the boot, and of course she ignores him.

Paul Hurst plays Frederick Carson, the local meanie farmer who's damned up the river, depriving the Quakers of water to irrigate their crops. A quick visit from Quirt not only rectifies that situation, but the cantankerous oldster even befriends Penny's parents. Soon they're exchanging pleasantries and poultices.

These are all fine veteran performers, but the script by James Edward Grant, who also directed the film, just doesn't give them anything special or interesting to do. We know what each character's going to do as soon as they're introduced, and it's just a matter of waiting for them to get around to it.

Grant was a busy screenwriter who worked on a lot of John Wayne movies, including "The Alamo" and "McLintock!" "Angel" was his first stint as a director, and shows his lack of visual flair or ability to elicit strong performances from his cast. He only directed one other film, 1954's "Ring of Fear."

There's one thing worth a quick comment: much has been made of who wears the black hat and the white hat in Westerns. Quirt literally wears both, exchanging a big white 10-galloner from the first part of the movie for its black counterpart in the last act. This happens during a typical saloon brawl, and after being thrown out the door (several times), Quirt is tossed the black hat in lieu of his own, and he acquiesces to the change.

A better movie would have made more of this moment, as Quirt -- who has temporarily wavered on his commitment to a kinder, gentler life -- fumbles in confusion over what his true role is.

Really, the only thing I liked about this movie was Harry Carey as the aged local marshal with the humdinger of the name, Wistful McClintock.

(I wonder if Grant repurposed the moniker, slightly varied, 16 years later for "McLintock!", a script Wayne commissioned from him.)

Carey was as big a cowboy superstar in the silent era as John Wayne was a generation later, so it's nice to see the two play in a movie together. Almost 70, this was one of the last films he made, passing away a few months after production wrapped.

His Wistful is a cagey old coot, sharp with the tongue and still deadeye with the long gun. He knows Quirt's reputation, recognizes that he's trying to make a fresh start, and just doesn't place any faith that it'll stick. He refuses to grant Quirt the benefit of the doubt, but at least acknowledges its possibility.

He shows up every now and then to interrogate Quirt about his doings, and the pair develop as much mutual respect as hunter and hunted can. Wistful even promises to pay Quirt the honor of using a brand-new rope when he comes to hang him.

"Angel and the Badman" is worth a look-see, if only to witness the hand-off from one ersatz cowboy legend to another.

Reeling Backward: "Island in the Sky" (1953)

"Island in the Sky" is something of a progenitor of the modern disaster flick. It's more limited in scope, with just five men trapped in the Canadian tundra when their plane is blown off course and runs out of fuel. But it has all the hallmarks of the disaster genre -- an existential threat, mounting tension leading to antagonism amongst the survivors, a brief early hope for rescue that is soon dashed, and eventual salvation for most, due largely to their own ingenuity and grit.

Director William A. Wellman was a World War I pilot and aviation nut who often returned to aerial spectacles whenever he could. The footage of mid-century transport planes cruising around frozen mountaintops and forests is indeed breathtaking, though it gets a bit old after a while.

Written by Ernest K. Gaan, "Island" was based on Gann's own novel, a fictionalized version of a real-life rescue in which he took part as a search pilot in 1943. I found the entire film rather flat and emotionless, filled with a bunch of stock characters -- with one or two notable exceptions.

The movie is best at depicting the quiet camaraderie of the civilian airline pilots recruited at the start of World War II, who as the narration (provided by Wellman himself) describes, are "of the Army but not in the Army." They fly long, grueling supply runs in dangerous weather and even uncharted territories, but are afforded a great deal of autonomy from the military command.

The title refers to the psychological sense of calm that pilots construct for themselves. They endeavor in a dangerous vocation that could lead to the death of their entire crew based on a single mistake. So they compensate by projecting a demeanor of unflappability that can be soothing to those around them, but takes a toll on their own psyche.

John Wayne plays Dooley, the steely captain who manages to land his plane in an ice storm, and then becomes the father/protector for his young charges. He must carefully ration the food, try to contact help using the plane's failing batteries to power the transmitter, and keep his men from losing their heads.

One of them does lose his head, co-pilot Frank Lovatt (Sean McClory), who wanders off into a storm and becomes snow blind. In perhaps the film's only moment of true power, Wellman pulls back the camera on Lovatt's body being quickly covered with falling snow to reveal that the man is actually only a few feet from the tail section of his plane.

Wayne was much praised for his performance, since he largely abandons the familiar cocky persona and embodies the role of a man up to his neck in panicky fear, laboring hard not to show it.

The other three crew members are pretty standard archetypes -- a no-nonsense galoot, a hyperactive radioman and a fresh-faced kid with a new baby at home. They never make any sort of real impact as distinctive characters.

Similarly, the fellow pilots who take up the search for Dooley and his crew are standard issue, and include James Arness as a big bruiser.

The one actor I couldn't keep my eyes off of is Andy Devine as Willie Moon, the unofficial leader of the search effort. The size of a buffalo and as cool as a cat, Moon likes to seem unperturbed by everything. At one point his crewman accuses him of appearing to actually care about something, and Willie furiously denies it.

Devine gives him all sorts of little signatory tics, like using a clothespin in the cockpit to hold his cigarette, or using a little grabber tool to work the comm switches rather than trying to shift his tremendous bulk.

As was frequent with Wellman's films, women are shunted to a far back burner. We only glimpse two or three female characters in flashback or telephone cutaway scenes. I get the sense Wellman included even those only begrudgingly.

A couple of nits I'd like to pick: when the other planes are searching for the lost crew, they fly in a close formation together rather than spreading out -- not a very effective way to cover lots of ground. Also, despite the frigid temperature of minus-70 degrees being repeated ad nauseum to pump up audience's sense of peril, none of the actors' breath is ever visible.

For a flick based on a true story, "Island in the Sky" feels like bunch of studio hooey.

Reeling Backward: "Rio Bravo" (1959)

One of the few things I disliked about studying cinema at New York University was the constant politicization of movies. As a student I was frequently bombarded with articles and professor lectures that shoehorned a political interpretation onto a movie that I didn't feel belonged there.

It wasn't just that these analyses nearly always came from a leftist perspective -- and by "nearly always," I mean 100% of the time -- while I swing to the right. It was the fact that films that were avowedly unpolitical still got this treatment. So you'd read something about action movies of the '80s and how they reflected a fascist, Reaganite mindset.

I thought it largely bull, and simply set most of it aside in my thinking about film.

It's hard not to place a political slant on 1959's "Rio Bravo," however, since John Wayne, director Howard Hawks and others involved in the production have explicitly described it as a conservative response to "High Noon," which they considered a bunch of pinko Hollywood claptrap.

Both films have a fairly similar plot, about a lone sheriff standing against a gang of outlaws coming to town. While Gary Cooper's lawman spent most of "High Noon" unsuccessfully trying to recruit local citizens to help him in the coming gunbattle, Wayne's John T. Chance conspicuously avoid asking for assistance. In fact, he gruffly turns down the offer of a blazingly fast gunslinger because the youngster had previously opted not to stick his nose in other people's business -- a move Chance himself had deemed most wise.

I don't think either film is overtly political, but you can read some things from an allegorical standpoint, particularly the individual's relationship to the larger community around him. Both men are respected for upholding the law, but when they become a target of the very forces they're meant to rein in, the townsfolk react in very different ways.

Cooper goes begging for help, and is ostracized. Chance makes it clear that he's willing to handle things more or less on his own, and is flooded with offers of assistance. Some, like Ricky Nelson as the confident whippersnapper Colorado Ryan, offer to help with their guns. Others, like Carlos the saloon owner (Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez) or rambling gambler Feathers (Angie Dickinson), come through with moral and logistical support.

For Feathers, that includes the proffering of herself as a sexual plaything for Chance to take or leave as he pleases. It's a strong, sensual turn by Dickinson as a woman who's empowered by her sexuality rather than burdened by it. She may use herself as a sex object, but it's her choice.

Dean Martin has one of his meatier film roles as Dude, Chance's former deputy who turned into a timid drunk after having his heart broken. He wandered back into town a couple of years ago, begging drinks wherever he can get them, even if it is a silver dollar thrown contemptuously into a spittoon by Joe Burdette, the local tough.

In the film's surprisingly dialogue-free opening sequence, Chance kicks the spittoon to keep Dude from debasing himself, and is rewarded by being knocked out cold with a chunk of wood swung from behind. This sets off a fight with Burdette, a bystander is shot and killed, and the rest of the movie is spent waiting for the U.S. marshall to come fetch Joe Burdette for trial, while his rich brother Nathan (John Russell) surrounds the jail with killers hired for a $50 gold coin apiece.

Much of the interaction between Chance and Dude involves the former tutoring the latter in the ways of manliness. At one later point, after Dude has sobered and taken up the badge again, another gunman repeats the dollar-in-the-spittoon joke. Dude, having successfully killed the man on the balcony who had the drop on him, is content to leave it at that, with his reputation restored. But Chance reminds him about the fellow throwing the coin, and Dude makes the man grovel for his impertinence.

Back at the jail is Stumpy, the cantankerous old deputy with a screechy voice and a hitch in his giddyup, played by the veteran character actor Walter Brennan. He's the sort of crusty-yet-sentimental creature who often populates the background of Westerns.

Longtime Wayne co-conspirator Ward Bond is around for a few minutes in the early going, as an old friend of Chance who is a little too vocal about the people needing to lend the sheriff a hand. For his trouble he's gunned down in the street by a Burdette assassin.

At nearly 2½ hours, "Rio Bravo" is notable for its languid pace without ever feeling like it's treading water. Screenwriters Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman delivered a comfortable, naturalistic script based on a short story by B.H. McCampbell.

There's a lot of scenes that basically consist of just a bunch of guys hanging around the jail, talking, drinking and even singing -- Martin and Nelson team up for a particularly pleasing rendition of "My Rifle, Pony and Me."

As much as I try, it's hard for me to dismiss -- or embrace -- "Rio Bravo" as a "conservative" Western. You could make the argument that the genre naturally lends itself to an emphasis on individualism, which is the historic domain of right-wing thinkers.

But even if John Wayne & Co. set out to make a conservative repudiation of "High Noon," it's difficult to see it as anything more than a well-made, engaging Western that stands sturdy on its own two boots -- politics be damned.

Reeling Backward: "Hondo" 1953)

"Hondo" isn't one of John Wayne's best Westerns, but it diverges in a few notable ways from the rest of his six-shooter work. In 1953 Wayne had the sort of clout that he could hand-pick his projects and directors, and this film was made through his own production company.

"Hondo" underwent a frame-by-frame restoration a few years ago, and is being released on Blu-ray tomorrow, June 5, in its first-ever widescreen presentation on video. Click the link below to find out more -- it also comes with a nice collection of extras.

Wayne & Co. found a short story by a then largely unknown Western writer, Louis L'Amour, and turned it into a screenplay stamped with Wayne's signature laconic style. James Edward Grant, a Wayne favorite, handled the script, a lean, atmospheric exercise coming in at a mere 84 minutes.

They used 3-D technology to film it, with some difficulty, and the film did relatively well at the box office. Interestingly, L'Amour penned a novelization of the movie that became a best seller, and did much to boost his career writing novels. Certainly, Hollywood took notice of him, with dozens of subsequent adaptations of his work.

But the most consequential thing about "Hondo" to me is that it's essentially a romantic drama that wears the dusty, fringed clothes of a Western. There are plenty of gunfights and chases -- using the all-too-popular 3-D technique of having stuff fly at the camera. But the heart of the story is about love and loyalty.

Geraldine Page, a bona fide Broadway star who used this movie to segue into a very successful film career, plays a prairie wife who falls in love with Honda Lane, a prototypical Wayne protagonist in many respects -- a hard, lonely man of action who lives by his own stubbornly independent credo.

Hondo's intro is pure Wayne myth-making. He stumbles in out of the desert, parched and horseless, bearing only a Winchester rifle, pistol, ammo belt and scruffy mongrel named Sam in tow. Sam is his companion but not his servant, and does what he likes, which is how  Hondo prefers it. His motto is to let other people do what they want to do, even if he knows it to be foolish or wrong, as this is the same courtesy he expects others to extend to himself.

Mrs. Lowe -- her name is credited as Angie, though I don't believe we ever hear her called that -- is a stubborn ranch wife, overseeing her rambunctious 6-year-old Johnny (Lee Aker). She repeatedly insists to Hondo that her husband is rounding up cattle and shortly to return, but they both know this to be a lie.

This have a confrontation where they make their feelings for each other plain. It includes Lowe making the extraordinary statement (for a Hollywood film in 1953) that she knows she's a homely woman. Hondo does not refuse this point, only stating that her inner qualities of steadfastness make her more appealing than any superficial traits.

Page is not of course anything in the same galaxy as homely, but director John Farrow (who won an Oscar for his screenplay of "Around the World in 80 Days") deliberately shoots her in a way to play up a dowdy sort of plainness.

Page, an early devotee of Method acting, does a yeoman's job with her part, which as written isn't terribly sophisticated. Her reactions and off-kilter line readings give her performance a showy sort of distinctiveness. It isn't a particularly authentic portrayal of  a 19th century ranch wife, but it does stand out from the drab sort womenfolk that generally populate these sorts of movies. Page received the first of eight Academy Award nominations for her turn.

(I should also note that L'Amour also received a nomination for best motion picture story, but L'Amour and the film's producers asked that it be withdrawn since it was based on a story that first appeared in a magazine, and the Academy complied. I'm not sure if there's any other occurrence like that in Oscar history.)

Frequent Wayne sidekick Ward Bond is around, playing a cantankerous ally named Buffalo Baker. James Arness, the future "Gunsmoke" star, has a small role as a Hondo antagonist who later saves his life, and is given Hondo's prize rifle as a reward. They have a brief fistfight, which is noteworthy for the fact that the looming 6-foot-7-inch Arness was one of the few actors who could make the 6'4" Wayne seem less intimidating.

"Hondo" has also been praised for a relatively progressive view of American Indians. Vittorio, the Apache chief (played by an Australian, Michael Pate, alas), is certainly fierce and bloodthirsty. But he has good cause -- Hondo himself notes that it's the whites who broke the treaty, not the Indians. Vittorio tells Mrs. Lowe that all his sons were killed by white raiders, yet he spares her and Johnny because he deems the young boy a brave little warrior for defending his mother from them.

Hondo himself is part Indian, living among the Apache for five years, took a squaw, and openly admires their ideals -- especially their hatred of lying. In the film's last moments, after the Apache have been driven off from their attack on settlers and the cavalry, Hondo notes that it's an end of a way of life, and a good one at that.

3 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "The Comancheros" (1961)

I don't regard "The Comancheros" as an exceptional Western. Its production values are exquisite -- gorgeous Deluxe color Cinemascope photography by William H. Clothier, a jaunty and memorable score by Elmer Bernstein, wonderfully detailed sets and costumes, and the steady hand and keen eye of director Michael Curtiz.

But in terms of plot and themes, it's largely a muddle. John Wayne plays Jake Cutter, a Texas Ranger who spends much of the movie undercover posing as a gunrunner. He apprehends Paul Regret (Stuart Whitman), a Louisiana gambler wanted for murder after he won a duel against the son of a wealthy New Orleans family. They part ways, reconnect, evolve from adversaries to allies, and eventually team up to take down the Comancheros -- white and Hispanic men who have been supplying the Comanche Indians with rifles and whiskey.

Oh, and there's a short-shrifted romance, too.

The story seems to meander with the tumbleweeds, following one course for awhile until it grows boring or reaches a dead end, and then picks up a breeze and heads the other way.

What I did find notable about the film is Wayne's character and performance. Despite a life of pain, including having his family killed, Cutter has an upbeat demeanor, always quick with a smile and a joke. He treats even his enemies with a friendly regard and a measure of respect. I can't remember another movie in which Wayne's eye twinkled so brightly and often.

This is at odds with the Duke's star persona, which always had a streak of orneriness running through. Sometimes meanness dominated the character, as with Ethan Edwards in "The Searchers," and sometimes it was barely discernible, like the Ringo Kid from "Stagecoach." Most of the time, though, Wayne's cussedness lay just beneath the surface, like the hard iron of a Colt Peacemaker inside a comfortably worn leather holster.

There's really only one moment in "The Comancheros" when Cutter loses his temper, and that's in his confrontation with Comanchero Tully Crow. Cutter, posing as gunrunner Ed McBain -- complete with foppish grey top hat -- rendezvous with Crow and cuts a deal to sell guns to the Comanche. They get drunk to celebrate, wind down with steak dinners and a game of cards, and get into an argument about cheating.

What's memorable about this scene is how Wayne's character repeatedly and deliberately ignores the other man's threats and insults, and only resorts to violence when Crow draws on him. Most of Wayne's hombres would have thrown done at the first hint of disrespect.

Crow is played by Lee Marvin in a deliciously vicious, brief performance made all the more memorable by the fact that Crow only has half a scalp -- the other having been taken by the Comanche before he gained their trust and began bartering with them. Curtiz aims the camera leeringly at Crow's raw, bizarre wound -- a freakshow counterpoint to the man's even more repulsive personality.

Speaking of Curtiz, "The Comancheros" was his last film. He died shortly after its completion, and in fact he did not actually finish filming. His health forced him to drop out, and Wayne himself completed production in the director's chair ... though he refused an onscreen credit for co-directing.

Curtiz' name is generally not mentioned when lists of the great Golden Age directors are bandied about, but he deserves to be. Because he was largely a journeyman filmmaker, who took whatever jobs the studio assigned him or (later) he could find, most historians and critics regard him merely as a capable gun-for-hire who was lucky enough to find himself attached to good projects.

Bollocks. One does not acquire this sort of astonishing filmography -- "Casablanca," "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "Mildred Pierce," "Angels with Dirty Faces," "Captain Blood," "The Adventures of Robin Hood," to name just a few -- through happenstance. The very fact that he did not have a distinctive style is what made him great: Curtiz adapted his artistry to the material, rather than forcing his vision on a picture like a Hitchcock or Ford would have.

Stuart Whitman had an interesting career. Though he was never quite a star, he worked steadily in film and television for nearly 60 years, until a self-imposed retirement starting about a decade ago. He's still with us, and contributed to a fantastic new Blu-ray edition of "The Comancheros" to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Ina Balin plays Pilar Graile, daughter of the head of the Comancheros. In the grand Hollywood tradition of Caucasian actors assigned to ethnic roles, Balin was a Jewess from Brooklyn playing a Hispanic woman. Pilar is interesting for her unbending self-confidence, pursuing a romance with Regret -- but only if she can maintain the upper hand.

Nehemiah Persoff has a steely turn as her father, a crippled man who nonetheless rules the Comancheros with the absolute power of a patriarch. (Persoff was also Jewish, so I guess at least there was a twisted consistency.) Even Cutter acknowledges that father Graile must have been "a man to step aside from" when he was young and whole.

The plot seems to have its own, unfathomable rhythm. The screenplay by Clair Huffaker and James Edward Grant is based on the novel by Paul Wellman. Cutter's pressing duty ricochets back and forth between apprehending Regret and tracking the source of the Comanche's guns. They end up in the Comanchero village for the final showdown with the Rangers almost by happenstance.

Speaking of guns, despite being set in the 1840s, the rifles depicted in the movie are lever-action Winchesters not available until after the Civil War. Similarly, the revolvers are not the clumsy cap-and-ball weapons of that era but the more advanced cartridge pistols that were not invented until 30 years later.

Usually, Hollywood would have just rejiggered the period for the sake of expediency. But the Comanche tribes were relegated to reservations by the 1850s, and the Comancheros quickly faded away without their best trading customer.

"The Comancheros" is not a particularly good example of the classic Western, but I found it an engaging movie to see and think about. Some movies are like that -- better when considered than watched.

3 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "The Wings of Eagles" (1957)

"The Wings of Eagle" is supposed to be a biopic of naval commander and screenwriter Frank "Spig" Wead, a tribute from John Wayne, John Ford and others who knew him well. It wants to be epic in scope, but ends up feeling like ham-fisted Cliff Notes version of a man's life.

The film loiters way, way too long on Wead's early days as a hell-raising test pilot, then jumps ahead through long sections of his life after he is paralyzed in an accident and becomes estranged from his family. At one point something like 10 years slips by in a single edit, and suddenly Wead is a rich and famous writer living in a Beverly Hills mansion. Then World War II breaks out and, despite having limited mobility with two canes, he somehow gains a commission as an officer aboard a naval carrier.

Watching it, I thought of a better title: "The Ellipses of Spig Wead."

The film, directed by Ford from a screenplay by William Wister Haines and Frank Fenton, never quite decides what tone it wants to strike. Up until the accident, the movie is fun-n-games with a little undercurrent of darkness about Wead's long-distance relationship with his wife, Min (Maureen O'Hara). Then it suddenly turns on a dime and tries to become an inspiration life story.

There's a long section with Wead in the hospital, laid up in traction with a broken neck, as his friend "Jughead" Carson (an excellent Dan Daily) visits him every day for nearly a year, urging him to wiggle his big toe. "I'm gonna move that toe!" he repeats over and over, a mantra that's supposed to be heartfelt but comes across as just plain silly.

I have to say I found the relationship between Wead and Min rather unconvincing, despite a nuanced performance by O'Hara. Spig will abandon his wife and two daughters for years at a time, then show up on her doorstep and within a matter of minutes, has her falling into his arms again. Min is supposed to be a tough, sassy redhead, but she sure is an easy touch when it comes time for wooing.

John Ford even briefly caricatures himself in the character of John Dodge, played by Ford mainstay Ward Bond, a slick Hollywood honcho who favors dark sunglasses, even indoors.

I also found it interesting that this is one of the very few films in which John Wayne appeared without his hairpiece, in the later sections as Wead grows older. This is especially noteworthy in that Wead himself still had a full head of hair at the time of his death.

I get the sense "The Wings of Eagles" was created to serve two purposes: As a tribute to Frank Wead, and an opportunity for John Wayne to play a more subtle character than we're used to seeing from him. It's not particularly successful at either.

1.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "The Long Voyage Home" (1940)

"The Long Voyage Home" is a curious animal. It stars John Wayne, already a major star in 1940, who gets top billing in this adaptation of a Eugene O'Neill play about the salty, often cruel life of sailors aboard a merchant marine ship.

And yet Wayne's character is not one of the most important in the story -- in fact, he's essentially a bit player.

Wayne barely speaks more than a few lines of dialogue throughout most of the movie, finally getting to string a couple sentences together in a scene near the end. But for the most part, other members of the ensemble cast rotate in and out of the limelight, with Wayne off to the side and in the background.

Imagine "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" with Jack Nicholson in the Martini role (played by Danny DeVito) and no McMurphy in the ward. That'll give you an idea how strange it is to see John Wayne in the margins of his own movie.

True, John Wayne was not quite yet JOHN WAYNE -- having just had his big breakout role a year earlier in "Stagecoach," also directed by longtime collaborator John Ford. But still, it's one thing to see the star of a picture relegated to a secondary role, and quite another when they have barely any screen time and hardly say a word.

It's a good film, a less plot-driven movie than a meandering look at the nomadic men who make their life on the high seas for various reasons. The cinematography by the great Gregg Toland -- his next film was "Citizen Kane" -- is a gorgeously bleak swath of shadows and light that makes the ship seem like its own world rather than just a dingy old merchant vessel.

The S.S. Glencairn is a slow, decrepit, rusty ship making one more long trip across the Atlantic. "An old hooker" is just one of the many colorful epithets the captain and crew lovingly (we think) use to describe the ancient bucket.

As the story opens, the Glencairn is docked in the West Indies, but most of the crew has been forbidden shore leave due to the secrecy of their next voyage. In an arresting opening shot, the men stand on the deck casting yearning glances at the beach, where native women writhe half-dressed. The gal in the foreground wears a blouse that barely clings to her shoulders as she runs a hand over her considerable cleavage -- pretty hubba-hubba stuff for 1940.

It's a typically motley crew. Aside from the stern captain (Wilfrid Lawson), the man who seems most in charge is Driscoll, an Irishman with a fondness for drink and trouble. Having gotten into a scrape with the law on shore, Drisc barely makes it back on board, scrambling up the anchor chain, to make roll call.

There's also Cocky, the acerbic ship's steward; and Yank (Ford mainstay Ward Bond), a lusty brawler and Drisc's right-hand man; John Qualen as Axel, a Swede who's small but feisty; and Donkeyman (Arthur Shields), who's given up on the land and is always ready to sign on for another voyage, no matter how bad the last one was.

Wayne plays Ole Olsen, a big Swedish farmer who's been promising his mother for the past 10 years he'll come home after the next voyage. Invariably, he and the boys go ashore for "one last drink" to celebrate his departure, and the next thing he knows he's signed on for another.

When he does talk, Wayne does so in what must be the worst Swedish accent in the history of cinema. Coupled with the fact that he looks about as Swedish as Sammy Davis Jr., and you've got a strong nominee for Wayne's worst screen performance.

Wayne, as has often been said, was not an actor but a movie star. He was good at playing one character: Himself ... or, at least, what the public believed to be his star persona. When Wayne tried to stretch himself into more exotic roles, he usually crashed and burned. I've never seen 1956's "The Conqueror," in which Wayne plays Genghis Khan -- yes, really -- but I hear it's howlingly bad.

The Glencairn crew nearly jumps ship when they learn their next job is a hold full of ammunition for the British. That means going through the War Zone patrolled by German U-boats hunting for ships bringing supplies for the war effort, and a huge target on the ol' Glencairn.

"The Long Voyage Home" was actually based on three different plays written by O'Neill, one of which bore that title, that were set during World War I. It's not much of a stretch to change the setting to WWII, since the life of a seaman wasn't very much different in the intervening quarter-century or so.

Much of the first half of the film is devoted to piercing the mystery of Smitty (Ian Hunter), a crew member with a mysterious, haunted past. He speaks the King's English like an aristocrat, and tries to jump ship after picking up their explosive cargo but is arrested and brought back.

Driscoll and the others come to believe Smitty is a German spy, but after opening the mysterious black box he hides under his pillow, they discover he's a disgraced officer who has run away from his family. It's quite a poignant moment  where Drisc reads a letter out loud from Smittie's wife in which she refuses his request to tell their two children he is dead.

The last third or so of the movie is one long bar crawl, as the men from the Glencairn are set up by some unscrupulous club owners. Ole, his ticket for Stockholm and last two years' wages sewn inside his coat, is drugged and shanghaied aboard another ship. His drunken crewmates stage a daring rescue, but Drisc is knocked unconscious and captured, replacing Ole as a conscript. The next day, newspapers reveal the ship was sunk in the Channel.

What does it all really add up to? "The Long Voyage Home" is long on character and atmosphere, and not really concerned with telling a story. It's a worthwhile film, especially for those wanting to explore John Ford's non-Western oeuvre. Even if John Wayne, the ostensible star, is woefully misused.

3 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Back to Bataan" (1945)

I've enjoyed writing this column for many reasons, but one has been discovering Golden Age war films that are much more nuanced and anti-war than I would have given credit for.

"Back to Bataan" is not one of them.

This creaky, stolid picture stars John Wayne as Col. Joseph Madden, an Army officer tasked with leading the insurgency in the Philippine Islands after General MacArthur was forced to withdraw, leaving tens of thousands of American soldiers in captivity at the cruel hands of the Japanese and their atrocities -- most famously, the Bataan Death March.

The march itself is briefly depicted in the film, but includes the movie's most curious moment. Andres Bonifacio, a captain and grandson of the Philippine's greatest hero, is among the prisoners. The Japanese soldiers are shooting or bayoneting any prisoner who falls or attempts to escape.

Bonifacio stumbles off the trail but passes out before he can reach safety. A Japanese soldier hovers him, preparing to stab him through, but then intentionally thrusts his bayonet harmlessly into the ground between Bonifacio's legs, looking around to see if anyone saw him. The man is then pulled into the jungle by the insurgents.

Now, why in the world would a Japanese soldiers spare this man? Did he know about Bonifacio's ancestry, and the ability of his surname to rally the people? Or was it simply the rare example of kindness amidst the atrocities? Either way, it needed to be explained.

Bonifacio is played by Anthony Quinn, the Irish/Mexican actor whose swarthy good looks allowed him to portray virtually every ethnicity in the movies, from Arab to Italian to Greek to Filipino.

Wayne's doing his usual big-hero shtick, leading other men through the sheer force of his personality -- and the explicit threat that he'll personally beat them senseless if they fail to obey.

The Japanese are portrayed in the usual way of World War II propaganda -- smiling while killing innocents, big glasses, etc. I know a war was one, but it's still sickening to watch this vile stuff so many years later. It makes you wonder: In German or Japanese war films of the era, are Americans depicted as big, gangly evildoers? Do they wear cowboy hats as they gun down innocent Germans? I'd love to know.

The other interesting thing about "Back to Bataan" is the explicitly heroic light in with the Filipinos are depicted. They are continually praised as brave, loyal and fiercely independent. One character, a young boy named Maximo who continually helps Madden and his troops, is beaten by the Japanese into revealing their location, but he sacrifices himself by steering the troop carrier into a ravine.

In his dying breath, Maximo apologies to his stodgy old white schoolteacher (Beulah Bondi) for misspelling "liberty" with a "u." She clutches his body, crying out that even if he couldn't spell it, no one better understood the meaning of the word.

It's a seriously corny moment in an underwhelming war picture.

1.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon"

"She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" is considered one of the all-time great Westerns, and supposedly John Wayne himself regarded it as his favorite role. But after finally catching it, I found it strangely unaffecting.

"Ribbon" is about a man who is retiring, and he doesn't really want to. In a way, it's sort of an Old West version of "About Schmidt," except John Wayne doesn't suffer from modern neuroses like Jack Nicholson. Both men have lost their wives, and are essentially alone as they face a horizon that holds who-knows-what for them.

The two films diverge in that Schmidt is leaving behind a business that could care less about one more old timer packing it in, whereas "Ribbon" is very much about the manly camaraderie of U.S. Cavalry troopers scratching out some semblance of law and order in the wake of an American Indian uprising. The men love Captain Nathan Cutting Brittles (now there's a cowboy name for you) and want him to stay as much as he does.

There's a strange little ritual Brittles performs every morning. The crusty, boozy Sgt. Quincannon (Victor McLaglen, a mainstay of John Ford's Westerns) wakes him up and escorts him outside for the morning review. As soon as they exit his barracks, they are joined by a couple of young troopers, and they all fall into a military cadence as they walk, without any order being given. The two older men -- Quincannon is also due to retire soon -- lurch along in a bow-legged crawl weighted by their years, while the youngsters are crisp and straight.

Wayne's character is supposed to be in his early 60s or so, though he was actually about 20 years younger than that. He wears gray dye in his hair and a walrus mustache in a rather unconvincing attempt to age him up.

The film's title comes from the character of Olivia Dandridge (Joanne Dru), the commander's daughter who is ordered to leave the post, along with her mother, now that the Sioux are on the warpath in the wake of Little Big Horn. It's tradition in the Cavalry for a woman to wear a yellow ribbon in her hair to indicate that she is bonded to a member of the troop. Though in Olivia's case, she leads two hot-headed young lieutenants to each believe she's wearing it for them.

I honestly found the whole subplot of the romantic triangle incredibly tedious, and hated whenever it diverted the movie from the main storyline, which is about Brittles' final mission.

He's supposed to lead a patrol out with several objectives: To deliver the women safely to the stagecoach landing, to reconnoiter with another patrol that is in danger of Indian attack, and to prevent a rogue government agent from selling rifles to the rebellious Indians. He fails all three.

The Cavalry is portrayed as unambiguously heroic, stalwart and true -- men who love the life in the company of others with similar natures. Ben Johnson plays Sgt. Tyree, the troop's best scout and a Rebel during the Civil War who good-naturedly throws barbs at his Yankee commanders.

With all the talk about the massacre of Gen. Custer at Little Big Horn, it's hard to reconcile that these same glorious figures in the movie were also the same responsible for atrocities against the Indians, slaughtering innocents at Wounded Knee and enforcing the capricious will of a federal government that repeatedly made and broke promises to the Indians.

My main complaint with the movie is how everything revolves around the character of Capt. Brittles. If the Cavalry was really as comradely as the film portrays, it seems unlikely that one man would so dominate the action and emotions of the group. One senses that if the role were played by an unknown actor instead of John Wayne, it would seem ridiculous that everyone is paying so much attention to the doings of what is just one member of a troop of hundreds.

So he's sad about retiring? Big deal. And the fact that the minute he rides off the post, the commanders send Tyree after him to offer him a new job undercuts everything that came before it. You've got nearly two hours of conflict about a man who doesn't want to leave his old life behind, tough and deadly though it may be, and then boom, he doesn't have to. The ending is so anticlimactic, it feels like that Gilda Radner character from the early days of "Saturday Night Live," who would get all worked up over something and then say, "Never mind."

2.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "They Were Expendable" and "Strategic Air Command"

Recently I watched a couple of old war flicks that I'd heard of but never knew much about. "Strategic Air Command" stars Jimmy Stewart as an Air Force pilot, and "They Were Expendable" has John Wayne as a PT boat captain.

The thing that struck me most about them was their bleak tone and unabashed confrontation with the unpleasant realities of military service. This is surprising, since they're both essentially propaganda films. "Expendable" was made by John Ford while serving as an auxiliary officer during WWII, and "SAC" came out in 1955 at the height of the Cold War, right as America was building up its nuclear arsenal.

In "SAC" Stewart plays a professional baseball player who is, in essence, stop-lossed and forced to return to the Air Force. Even though the country is not at war, the air command general orders all reserve officers back to active duty. This messes up Stewart's baseball career, as well as putting his new marriage on the coals. A surprising amount of the movie deals with the marital tensions between the reluctant officer and his bride.

(I should mention that Stewart was 47 when this movie came out, so he looks a bit long in the tooth to portray a pro athlete, even one who only has "a few good baseball years" left in him, as his character puts it.)

During his stint, Stewart meets other officers who were similarly forced back into service, and aren't too happy about it. Pretty bold stuff for the '50s. Eventually, of course, he sees the value in what he's doing and declines to return to baseball when his tour is up.

It's a gorgeous movie to look at, directed by Anthony Mann in widescreen with vivid Technicolor. Ultimately, it falls a bit flat because there's not much conflict to dramatize. Since there's no combat, Stewart's big dangerous missions consist of flying back and forth to Alaska and hoping the plane doesn't blow up.

I was also fascinated by the aerial footage of aircraft flying, tons and tons of it -- taking off, cruising, mid-air refueling. The movie is almost fetishistic in its portrayal of the machinery. I'm sure my father, who served in the Air Force during this period, and my father-in-law and brother-in-law, who were/are airline pilots, would probably enjoy all these flying scenes.

I knew about "They Were Expendable" but had sort of dismissed it in my mind as a typical wartime propaganda film -- sort of "The Green Berets" a generation earlier. I was surprised at how good the movie was, and gritty.

It's about the early days of the war in the Pacific, when things aren't going so well for the Navy. The film actually came out in December 1945, a few months after the war had wrapped up. I wonder what its reception would have been had such a bleak portrayal of American military failure come out while the fighting was still on.

To add to the misery, John Wayne and Robert Montgomery aren't big-time captains of destroyers or other battleships, but PT boat skippers -- tiny, fast boats that are dismissed by the Navy brass as useless toys. Most of the story has to do with the PT guys trying to prove that their boats have a role to play in the war.

The boats themselves are fascinating. They were about the size of a large speedboat; there was no belowdecks area except for the engine bay, so all the sailors stayed exposed up on the surface. PT stands for patrol torpedo, and in fact each boat carried four torpedoes in tubes attached to the top of the deck. I can only imagine how many PT boat crews got blown up when enemy fire hit their exposed torpedos.

There's a fair amount of combat scenes, and it's pretty gripping stuff, although John Ford had to resort to models and stock footage for the scenes where the big ships get blown up by the PTs.

Though it all, the PT squadron never gets any respect. They have to barter for materials and gasoline, and even blackmail a submarine captain into sharing some torpedoes with them. They get folded into the Army command, and eventually their squadron is disbanded and their boat hauled off on a truck to perform message duty.

The title of the movie itself is telling: "They were expendable." It's about the role of tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers captured or killed at Bataan and Corregidor -- men whose job, in essence, was to sacrifice themselves to buy time for America to gear up for war.

Who knew ostensibly pro-military movies could offer such an honest and biting portrayal of life in a uniform? Not me, and I'm glad I learned this lesson.