The first wrong note of Gunfight at Rio Bravo lands with the opening shot where the words “East Texas, 1873” appear superimposed on an image of rugged mesas in a sunblasted desert. You wonder where in lush, forested East Texas that might be, and how it relates to the faraway Rio Bravo which runs along the southern border with Mexico. But these turn out to be minor issues in a film that ends up failing to effectively execute almost any of the basic elements of filmmaking beyond pointing the camera at some people in costumes. Technically speaking, it’s a movie, and it strives to be a Western, but there isn’t a shred of original content to differentiate it from something the neighborhood kids might whip up on a dull afternoon if they had access to some really nice cameras and heads full of Gunsmoke reruns.
The quality of the cameras is actually something of a problem. The high frame rate and sharp definition give everything the crystalline clarity of an overly-illuminated infomercial, creating palpable dissonance with the gritty environs. You sense from the beginning that something is off, and that feeling increases with every awkwardly paced scene. Directed by Joe Cornet from Craig Hamann’s screenplay, the story centers on a mysterious Russian gunslinger, Ivan (Alexander Nevsky), whom we first witness dispensing rough justice without actually killing his adversaries. Never fear–he slaughters plenty of people later on, but his moral code kicks in at random moments. It’s eventually explained what a Russian warrior is doing in the Old West, but a sense of incongruity persists throughout the film where multiple characters showcase unlikely accents. A suspicion sets in that no one involved in the film’s production has seen more than a handful of Westerns, and they’re recreating this one from a small grab bag of clichés.
As a protagonist, Nevsky displays glimpses of Schwarzeneggeresque charisma, but he’s undermined by a lackluster role that asks little of him beyond squinting and trudging around with his thumbs in his belt. Other characters refer to his huge size but he’s rarely filmed with any sense of scale that might create that impression for the viewer. Costumed like a guy walking out of Wilson’s Leather at the shopping mall with a new duster and some discount boots, he looks both unremarkable and wholly out of place for a guy on the wild Texas frontier. Ivan’s role in the community is undefined but he has the ear of the sheriff (Joe Cornet) and a federal marshal (Olivier Gruner) who rides into town with a wanted man in custody, en route to San Antonio for hanging. That criminal, Ethan Crawley (Matthias Hues), cuts an impressive figure, huge and straggly in a Confederate officer’s greatcoat and an improbable German accent. Crawley’s gang of Hellhounds is on the way to bust him out of jail and massacre the innocents in Rio Bravo, so Ivan and the townspeople decide to make their stand. As far as plots go, it’s a serviceable one for a Western, but there are no twists or embellishments beyond that basic skeleton. Why do the bad guys want to kill everyone? Because they’re bad guys. One begins to suspect that the entire film was generated by an A.I. program that scoured a few John Wayne movies for repackageable content but hasn’t found its way past the uncanny valley of unrelenting artificiality.
At least the sets look good–a collection of credibly weathered clapboard shacks on a dusty plain. In act three, the Hellhounds move in with guns blazing. A handful of “painted women” make themselves available for rescue by Ivan, whose strategy for defeating the gang of marauders involves nothing more than walking down the middle of the street and shooting them all with perfect aim and zero moral code. It’s only when Ivan and Crawley face off in a climactic gunfight that we get a credibly executed suspense sequence that, despite its lack of originality, manages to replicate the beats of a classic battle of wits and skill.
Apparently based on the true story of Ivan Turchin, a Russian immigrant who served as a brigadier general in the Union army, it’s safe to say that the events of this film are largely fictionalized and grafted onto the generic outline of the script. However, just in case viewers miss the details of Ivan’s biography offered during the film, multiple paragraphs of explanation appear onscreen prior to the closing credits, many of which repeat identical passages and details from prior dialogue. Forcing viewers to read an extended Wikipedia entry as the film’s concluding beat is certainly a choice, but absolutely not a good one. However, if your bingo card has a square for the villain telling the protagonist, “You and me, we’re the same,” then this is the movie for you. Just don’t expect a lot from the hero’s comeback, because all you’re going to get from Ivan is the flat statement, “No, we’re not.” Nothing else. It’s inert, unimaginative and comically simpleminded, just like the rest of the movie. The sequel promised in the closing credits feels like a threat. Gunfight at Rio Bravo‘s 80-minute runtime might be brief, but that’s a fistful of time you’d be wise to spend elsewhere.
Photo courtesy of Shout! Studios
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