You won't be disappointed!

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

One of 51 westerns by Republic, in the late '30s and early '40s. under the banner of The 3 Mesquiteers: a combination of mesquite and musketeers. The identity of the 3 actors varied. John Wayne was one in only 8 of them, including this one. With a run time of only 56min., it packs in a lot of scheming and action. This is an early example of the directing of George Sherman of Republic B westerns. He would later switch to Columbia, and then to Universal, nearly always directing B westerns. Here, Wayne as Stony, Roy Corrigan as Tucson, and Max Trehune, as Lullaby are the 3Ms. Lullaby occasionally got out his dummy and practiced ventriloquism.......The 3Ms are assigned the task of identifying and arresting the members of a mysterious gang of rustlers , who seemingly make the cattle disappear without a trace. They run into a friend, Tex, who has been trying to go undercover to discover the workings of this gang. But, he hasn't had any success. Stony suggests that Tex take his place as one of the 3Ms,while Stony disguise himself as an escaped prisoner. Based on some information, the real Stony decides to first check out the Payne Health Dude Ranch. He soon talks his way into a job with Payne, who turns out to be the kingpin of the rustling racket. Stony gets the assignment to kill the 3Ms. He rides with a couple of henchmen to the Mason' s house, where they are rumored to be. He goes in, we hear 2 shots, and he exits. Amazingly, the two henchmen don't investigate, assuming that he did his job on 2 of the 3Ms. Stoney arranges a big funeral for the 2, that attracts the whole town.(but where are the bodies??) The idea is that the rustlers will figure this is an excellent time to rustle some cattle, and Stony can find out the planned pickup location. The rustlers use a pair of long 18 wheelers, that look nothing like typical cattle trucks, to transport the cattle. Stony sits beside the driver of one, until the henchman pulls a gun on him, declaring that he must be the real Stony. He's about to shoot Stony when Tucson and Lullaby appear out of nowhere and shoot the gun out of the henchman's hand. The 3Ms succeed in getting the henchman to tell them the revised location of the cattle pickup, only after locking him in the truck and turning up the refrigeration system. Pretty soon, a posse shows up, and(I forget why) are loaded in the truck, with their horses, for transport to the designated pickup point. Banker Hartley insists on riding in the cab , with Tucson. After a while, he pulls out a gun and directs Tucson to slow around the next curve, so he can jump out, and then the truck supposedly will go over a cliff, killing all inside. What a dastardly fellow!, But Stony manages to open the back door enough to climb onto the roof, eventually reaching the cab. Tucson sees him coming, in his mirror, and shoves Hartley out the door, as Stony slides into the driver's seat. What a cliff hanger! When they get there, the posse pours out and battles the rustlers. Eventually, they are killed or surrender, and are herded into the truck. I've left out some threads, and have some reservations about details in the story....... There are 2 young women slightly involved: Lorna Grey, as Jane, is Tex's girlfriend. The striking blond Lenore Bushman, as Evelyn, apparently is a guest at the dude ranch. Too bad she only had a couple of film credits and is barely in this one. Mrs. Maxwell is an older woman, and engages in a bit of comedy, supposedly teaching Stony how to ride a horse, when she can't get on without help.

. . . were making the Realistic Flicks that Blue Collar Americans yearned to see, such as THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT, John Wayne was catering to the crowd peopling Tod Browning's classic film, FREAKS, with such fare as THEY DRIVE BY DAY (also released as RED RIVER RANGE). Wayne's show features a dude ranch owner who gets the bright idea of embedding his elderly bridge-playing lady clients amid a gang of ACTUAL cattle rustlers, so that they can steal and drive their Bovine Cownapees IN BROAD DAYLIGHT 5 or 10 miles to a refrigerator truck, where the purloined sirloin is slaughtered and dressed, again IN BROAD DAYLIGHT! Amazingly, it also turns out that the cooling semi-trucks tooling around America's rutty two-track back roads in the 1930s could freeze meat at minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit (presumably so that it would stay fresh on ice in the event of a catastrophic Mad Cow Disease Outbreak in the 22nd Century, at which time the descendants of the rustlers--after paying 300 years of high electric bills--could fetch top dollar for their meat).

Good cast, great William Lava score, and generally high production values -- marred only slightly by an obviously fake riding scene with young Sammy McKim -- raise this Three Mesquiteers programmer from the routine.Bob Livingston had been replaced at this point in the series by a very good-looking John Wayne as Stony Brooke, but Ray Corrigan and Max Terhune continued as Tucson Smith and Lullaby Joslin.Veteran Polly Moran made a great lady dude visiting out West, and the bad guys -- a large number -- were very believable.Maybe this is just exactly what we expect from the pros at Republic (I like the sound of that word) Pictures, but George Sherman's directing was actually above the average. He used a moving camera to excellent benefit and got some superlative performances out of, perhaps especially, Crash Corrigan, who was in great shape, and looked handsome and heroic, and gave a very credible performance.Three Mesquiteers movies after the very earliest entries were programmers and probably were never expected to be considered classics, but they are. In part because of the unfailingly high quality of casts and in part because of the generally good quality of story.There was a lack of consistency in the settings, this one being set at about the time of the filming, with cars and trucks figuring as prominently as horses.But it all fits; there is no anachronistic feeling.This is good stuff, and I recommend "Red River Range," which you can find at YouTube.

No matter what film John Wayne appears in he's always interesting to watch. Besides the fact that as an actor he was used by novelists and directors to reinvent the American west, as a personality he was endearing to watch, especially in this film where he is more important than the storyline.