John Wayne Western Rio Bravo is one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorite movies, and here’s how it influenced his own work. Director Howard Hawks has been cited as one of the great American filmmakers and helmed many classics from His Girl Friday to The Big Sleep and the original 1932 Scarface. John Carpenter is one filmmaker who holds Hawks in high esteem, with 1959’s Rio Bravo being one of Carpenter’s favorite movies. In fact, Carpenter did his own riff on the concept with 1976’s Assault On Precinct 13.
Rio Bravo cast John Wayne – who nearly worked with Elvis – as Sheriff Chance, who has to rely on an alcoholic deputy (Dean Martin) and a young gunfighter (Ricky Nelson) for help when he waits for a marshal to collect a dangerous prisoner. Rio Bravo was a big success back in 1959 for its likable heroes and witty dialogue and is considered one of the best Westerns ever made.
Hawks himself made an unofficial trilogy where he basically remade Rio Bravo twice. The first was 1967’s El Dorado, where Wayne’s gunfighter teams with Robert Mitchem’s drunken sheriff, while Hawks’ final movie Rio Lobo cast Wayne as a union officer heading to the titular town to hunt some train robbers. Carpenter – who also offered a sci-fi take on El Dorado with Jason Statham’s Ghosts Of Mars – is far from the only admirer of Hawks’ work, with Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino being two major fans.
The latter has spoken about his love of Rio Bravo on several occasions, and even famously stated “When I’m getting serious about a girl, I show her Rio Bravo and she better ****ing like it!” More than that, Tarantino has labeled it as the ultimate “hang out movie,” where part of the pleasure of the film is just getting to know the characters. In contrast to the leanness of Assault On Precinct 13, Rio Bravo runs an hour longer and features extended scenes where Wayne’s sheriff, Angie Dickinson’s Feathers and the others just talk with one another. This style would end up being a big influence on Tarantino’s filmography.
Many of Quentin Tarantino’s movies follow this “hang out” vibe where viewers spend a lot of time with characters in scenes that don’t necessarily further the story or talking about unrelated subjects. Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown and especially The Hateful Eight feature many scenes of the protagonists or even the antagonists getting to know each other. Rio Bravo also features short, sharp bursts of violence, which is also how Tarintino tends to punctate long scenes of dialogue, like Inglourious Basterds’ bar scene.
Tarantino has also praised Rio Bravo’s famous “My Rifle, My Pony, And Me” scene, where Martin and Nelson have a musical duet. It’s clearly an excuse to sneak a song into a movie fronted by two major singers but has been derided as corny and distracting in contemporary reviews, but Tarantino loves it because it exemplifies the “hang out” feel. There isn’t really a comparable scene in Quentin Tarantino’s – who has made many cameos – own work but considering his use of music to set mood and tone, it’s easy to see how this Rio Bravo scene would be an inspiration.