All things considered, he refuses to leave before fulfilling his obligation to the local Indian tribe. It's a film about honor and duty as well as loneliness and mortality. Best of all, the scene in which Wayne fights back tears when receiving a gold watch from his troops is unforgettably bittersweet. If you view the whole trilogy, it actually makes sense to save this for last. Years later, after Dunson has become a successful rancher, mentor and protege have an acrimonious falling out during a grueling cattle drive and go their separate ways, with Dunson vowing to kill Matt.
Red River is a true classic and unquestionably one of the greatest westerns of all time.
All of this is set against the magnificent, poetic topography of Monument Valley. This is easily one of the greatest of American films. They Were Expendable is the greatest American film of the Second World War, made by America's greatest director, John Ford, who himself saw action from the Battle of Midway through D-day. Yet it's been oddly neglected. They Were Expendable , however, which was made when Allied victory was all but assured, is profoundly elegiac, with the patient grandeur of a tragic poem.