YMMV / Rio Bravo

• Adaptation Displacement: There was originally a short story by Barbara Hawks McCampbell, Howard Hawks' daughter, who paid her to write it.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is Nathan Burdette serious when he plays El Degüello to signify that he won't show any mercy even if the heroes surrender, or is he just bluffing? His men don't kill Dude when they briefly impersonate him and also leave Carlos and Consuela alive after taking them prisoner. Chance even speculates that Burdette won't try to kill anyone except himself and Dude (both of whom witnessed Joe commit murder).
• Award Snub: It received zero Academy Award nominations.
• Awesome Music:
  • The score by Dimitri Tiomkin.
  • Howard Hawks realised that he had Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson in his film, so he put a musical number in. Martin sings "My Rifle, My Pony and Me" (which samples Tiomkin's own score from Red River), while Nelson leads a singalong of "Come Along Home, Cindy".
• Broken Base: While Rio Bravo and El Dorado are both widely accepted as classic Westerns, asking a room full of fans of the genre which film is better is unlikely to result in a unanimous consensus.
• Ethnic Scrappy: The Hispanic hotel owner and his wife are more annoying than comical to some. Though Carlos at least provides aid to the heroes during the final confrontation with Burdette and his men.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The film was a huge success in Italy, laying the groundwork for the following decade's Spaghetti Western boom.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Despite appearing to call for nothing more than John Wayne's typical performance, the film lets him show more range than usual, as Chance has quite a few vulnerable moments where it's clear how worried he really is about making it through the standoff. He also gets really flustered in his scenes with Feathers.
  • The film also showed people that Dean Martin could do more than sing or be straight man to former comedy team partner Jerry Lewis. The scenes where recovering alcoholic Dude is going through withdrawal and has the "shakes" proved how good a dramatic actor he could be.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Nathan Burdette has a band play music that was used to intimidate the defenders at the Alamo. A year after this film, John Wayne directed and starred in The Alamo as Davy Crockett.
• Ho Yay: The word "homoerotic" has been used to describe some people's feelings about the duet between the deputies.
• Moral Event Horizon: If you didn't think Joe Burdette was a Jerkass for tossing a coin in a spittoon for Dude or forcing a kiss on a woman, you will when he murders a man for absolutely no reason other than he tried to break up his fight with Dude.
• Signature Scene: Whether it's viewed as Ho Yay or simple bonding and camaraderie, the scene of the deputies singing in the jail is a pretty iconic Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene.
• The Woobie: Dude. He's left broken from an unhappy affair, and has turned to alcoholism, which has taken a toll on his confidence.

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