Rio Grande

Rio Grande is a 1950 Western set on the Texas frontier, where Lieutenant Colonel Kirby Yorke commands a small cavalry garrison tasked with protecting settlers from Apache raids. His troops are badly undermanned, and his position is complicated by a government agreement that keeps the army from crossing the Rio Grande into Mexico, giving the raiders a safe haven. Into this strained situation arrives Yorke's son Jeff, a West Point dropout who has enlisted as a recruit in his father's regiment. The two have not seen each other in fifteen years. Soon afterward, Yorke's estranged wife Kathleen also appears at the fort, determined to bring her son home.

John Ford directed, working from a screenplay by James Kevin McGuinness, with Merian C. Cooper and Ford producing for Argosy Pictures and Republic Pictures. The film is the third in the director's cavalry series, following She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and it ranks as the fourteenth of the thirty-one films he directed. John Wayne plays Kirby Yorke, with Maureen O'Hara as Kathleen, Claude Jarman Jr. as Jeff, and Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr. and Chill Wills in supporting roles. Twenty-seven cast members and forty-four crew members are credited.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from roughly 19,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.8 from about 400 votes. A critics' rating of 7 out of 10 from 15 reviews places it close to the audience assessment. The film runs 105 minutes.