The third and last of the cavalry trilogy, this film is often regarded as the best of them depending on which critic or western fan you read. It received an Oliver Signature Collection release and the bluray has more special features than She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, which I think is the best of the trilogy and cited more often by community ranking of westerns. Rio Grande to me is the weakest with Fort Apache coming in second because of Fonda's performance and a more compelling story. Rio Grande isn't bad, just plodding and uneventful. For the first 45 minutes the plot doesn't move much and the vignettes and slices of life in camp are too leisurely for my taste. They serve as small moments of character writing but at the expense of decent pacing.

Out in this fort arrives a small detachment of reinforcements comprised of only a handful of men. One is Wayne's son whom he hasn't seen since he was a baby. John Ford seems to be setting up a father-and-son conflict here that will fester throughout the film and need to be resolved. To my bewilderment the awkwardness is completely diffused from their very first scene. I expected a long melodrama as Wayne struggles to accept his son until the denouement, and Ford teases the audience with this motif, but it's totally averted. Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr. return along with others from the Ford stock company, although their characters aren't as sharply drawn as in Yellow Ribbon. What makes the film come alive is whenever Maureen O'Hara as Wayne's wife appears on screen. The tension and chemistry between them is electric. They aren't on best of terms and slowly work toward a reconciliation by the end of the film.

This is all fine stuff, but so often the pacing is interrupted by too many scenes of soldiers marching around in song, Ben Johnson and others singing in a tent, and Ken Curtis (guitarist in The Searchers) in ensemble serenade for Wayne and O'Hara. Ford had a soft spot for these moments of song, but it drags the film down for me. Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo had one song by Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson that came as a surprise at the right moment in the sheriff's office; it didn't outstay its welcome. Meanwhile in Rio Grande by the hour mark, I'm still not sure what the main conflict or purpose of the story is. It's only in the last 45 minutes that we get a sense of what needs to happen in the plot structure. It's all okay, just thinner material than Fort Apache and Yellow Ribbon. Judging from the special features, Leonard Maltin's introduction, and other comments/reviews I've read I'm missing what makes this great.