Only Howard Hawks would take a stab at the western, this being his first one, and just happen to make one of the greatest. Hawks could do every genre and make a classic or two in the process: comedies (His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby), noir (The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not), musicals (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), crime dramas (Scarface). He'd go on to make some of the best westerns of all time (Rio Bravo, El Dorado) and that includes Red River. To be honest, it didn't put a spell on me like Rio Bravo, which seems like a perfect cozy western. Red River is all about the western frontier and cattle driving. Walter Brennan plays the stage driver and old friend of John Wayne; he's already eased into the type-cast old coot role he'd play in many subsequent films. Wayne is a Texas cattle rancher who adopts a boy out on the range after surviving an Indian attack. The boy grows up to be Montgomery Clift. Ebert calls this one of the greatest westerns for its story centering on a troubled father-son dynamic amidst the first cattle drive to Chisholm Trail.

Hawks achieves Fordesque shots of the west so well that Ford would often get compliments for the film, and Ford slyly accepted them even though he had nothing to do with the picture. Yet Hawks wasn't as concerned with composition as he was with human drama. He keeps his camera in mid-range shots. There's a famous montage with a bunch of closeups of the cowboys hooting and yeehawing as they get ready to move out and it personifies the joys of the cattle drive. On several occasions when Red River is honored, as Siskel & Ebert did in one of their shows, they spotlight this scene of yeehawing cowboys.

The story is gripping with Wayne playing a headstrong and flawed man losing the confidence of his men during the trek to Missouri. When he hears rumors that Kansas has a railroad and they could cut their journey short, he obstinately keeps on course to the dismay of his men. Eventually Clift has to mutiny and take over as leader, leaving Wayne behind. Clift and his men along the way save some settlers who have been encircled by Indians. There's a feisty female character introduced here, Tess Millay (Joanne Dru), who becomes a love interest for Clift. Wayne, who is vengefully on Clift's tail, meets Tess in the settler camp and they have some good scenes of dialogue.

Wayne is sympathetic as a tortured character here. He's forced to take his cattle north or risk bankruptcy. People keep telling him he's wrong when taking the cattle to Abilene instead of the longer trek to Missouri. There are a few attempted mutinies, Wayne gets more paranoid, sleep deprived and there are of course parallels with Mutiny on the Bounty. It's understandable that he'd be ornery. Wayne portraying a dubious and bad character at this point is interesting in contrast to his earlier westerns. It's a strong performance that defines what it means to have acting range. When Ford saw the film, he purportedly said, "I didn't know the big son of a bitch could act."

There's a friendly rivalry and relationship between John Ireland (the young and assured cowboy who seems good with a pistol) and Clift's character who seems to be the fastest. The film never delivers any kind of conflict or final showdown with these two. So the professional rivalry was a red herring but entertaining on screen nonetheless. The film reaches its climax when Clift brings the cattle to Kansas and Wayne catches up with them to enact revenge. Wayne confronts Clift and they get into a scuffle, with Tess scolding them for acting like fools. On hearing her words the fight ends and both characters are reconciled. Ebert notes that this final scene isn't satisfying. Borden Chase hated it: two men act out a fierce psychological rivalry for two hours, only to cave in instantly to a female's glib tongue-lashing. I suppose, but it didn't bother me. This is a great exterior western, the greatest cattle drive film in the canon, and undeniably a classic.