As I'm sure I say every time I review a Western, it's not my favourite genre, but the more I learn about Westerns and the influence they've had over the rest of film culture the more I enjoy seeing the tropes we all know, even if we don't all know where they're from.

I also watched this film because I know what a classic it is within the genre, how influential Howard Hawks was as a director and how you can't really call yourself a movie fan without seeing one of The Duke's most iconic performances and films.

As John T Chance, Wayne is the sheriff of an emblematic frontier town full of trouble. When the ne'er-do-well younger brother of a wealthy local land baron teases Chance's deputy, drunkard The Dude (Dean Martin) by tossing a coin into a spittoon, a fight breaks out and a man is shot and killed.

Chance puts the guy away for the killing, intending to keep him in the lockup until the Marshall comes to collect him for trial, four days away. But he has his work cut out for him because the robber baron wants his brother out and has the resources to send an army against Chance to force his hand.

It's going to be especially trying because the sheriff's only allies are Dude himself, who knows full well he might not be able to get over the DT's enough to be as good as he used to be, the old lame jail keeper Stumpy (Walter Brennan) and the cocky young sharpshooter Colorado (Ricky Nelson), one of the guys who comes into town with Chance's old friend Wheeler – who's killed in a shootout as the tension builds.

The foursome form an unlikely bond that's equally unlikely to succeed as the landowner's men infect every shadow and every corner, itchy trigger fingers waiting for the chance to divide and strike.

But Chance also has to deal with the growing feelings for the winsome Feathers (Angie Dickinson, giving a genuinely good performance and not just one that suits the genre and times), a gambler who's come in on the stagecoach that he's ordered to leave town for her safety but who ignores him, going as far as sitting outside his room at the hotel with a shotgun to protect him as the danger mounts.

It all builds to a climax that would have thrilled audiences on the big screen back in the late 50s, and (to the extent I know the genre, which as I've said isn't very much) doesn't put a foot wrong in either plotting or pacing or the technical elements in staging and action.

It might remind you of ideas and whole movies right up to Assault on Precinct 13 and beyond, and that's not an accident, with directors as varied as Carpenter and Scorsese referencing and homaging the trademark styles of the Western classics.

It even capitalises on Ricky Nelson and Dean Martin's singing careers by including the Western-iest song you've ever heard (My Rifle, My Pony and Me) during a momentary lull, a motif even I knew from John Landis homaging it in The Three Amigos.

But if all that's not enough to keep you interested and you're below 60, it'll be somewhere between amusing and a pleasure to see John Wayne do what he did best, from the effortless cool to his signature drawl.

If you really dislike the genre Rio Bravo might not convince you, but I've always seen the appeal (even if it never has quite grabbed me), so I liked it despite itself.