Rio Bravo

John Wayne was born 100 years ago this week and the occasion is marked with DVD riches, namely this new deluxe set of Howard Hawks' laconic Western. "Rio Bravo" was ostensibly Hawks' response to "High Noon," his portrait of a "real" lawman (played here by the aging John Wayne) and a determined professional who turns down the well-meaning efforts of amateurs when gunmen come after him. The irony is that he ends up under siege with a drunk (Dean Martin), a green kid who is good with a gun (Ricky Nelson) and a crippled, crotchety old man (Walter Brennan) by his side. With unpretentious ease and a rich sense of camaraderie, Hawks turns out a classic tale of redemption and creates some of his most memorable scenes (most of them involving, surprisingly, Dean Martin) in an almost generic Western movie setting. It's so easygoing and dramatically modest that critics at the time overlooked how sublime and rich it was, but today it's recognized as a Hawks masterpiece -- and one of the greatest Westerns ever made. Angie Dickinson is the sexiest of Hawks' insolent leading ladies, and Ward Bond, Claude Akins and John Russell co-star.

The two-disc special edition features commentary by historian/critic Richard Schickel and director/Hawks fan John Carpenter, recorded separately and swapped in and out through the film in an interesting critical byplay. It also includes Schickel's excellent 1973 documentary "The Men Who Made the Movies: Howard Hawks," as well as the new featurettes "Commemoration: Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo" (featuring interviews with actress Angie Dickinson and filmmakers Peter Bogdanovich, John Carpenter and Walter Hill) and "Old Tucson: Where the Legends Walked." Also available in an "Ultimate Collector's Edition" (which includes minireproductions of the film lobby cards, the original press book and the Dell comic-book adaptation) and in Blu-ray and HD DVD editions.

Other John Wayne release this week include new special editions of the late Wayne Westerns "True Grit" (1969) and "The Cowboys" (1972), both with commentary and featurettes. Also debuting on DVD are six less-iconic films: "Allegheny Uprising" (1939), "Reunion in France" (1942), "Without Reservations" (1946), "Tycoon" (1947), "Big Jim McLain" (1952) and "Trouble Along The Way" (1953), available separately or in the box set "The John Wayne Film Collection"