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Rio Lobo is the last film by Howard Hawks, a titan of American cinema and the director of a litany of undisputed classics, including Scarface, Only Angels Have Wings, The Big Sleep and Monkey Business. Like his previous films Red River, The Big Sky and Rio Bravo, it is an ode to the Old West – a staunchly traditionalist tale of the frontier led by the genre’s biggest star, John Wayne.
Wayne stars as Colonel Cord McNally of the Union army, who loses a close friend during a raid on a Union payroll train carried out by a group of Confederates under the leadership of Captain Pierre Cordana (Jorge Rivero) and Sergeant Tuscarora Phillips (Christopher Mitchum). McNally suspects that he and his men were betrayed by traitors within the Union, setting in motion a quest for revenge that will continue even after the Civil War is over – and which will bring McNally into a bitter conflict with ruthless landowner Ketcham (Victor French) and “Blue Tom” Hendricks (Mike Henry), the corrupt sheriff of Rio Lobo, Texas.
By 1970, the Western genre was rapidly changing. In America, Revisionist Westerns – typified by the likes of The Wild Bunch, Little Big Man and Soldier Blue – were questioning the established mythology of the West, while Italy’s morally grey Spaghetti Westerns were at the height of their international popularity. Meanwhile, Rio Lobo stood firm in tradition as Hawks’ final Western – and now joins the Masters of Cinema series.
