El Dorado

El Dorado doesn't quite have the scope or ambition of Howard Hawks's greatest Westerns, Red River and Rio Bravo. But this relaxed picture, made near the end of Hawks's marvelous career, still shows the steady, sure hand of a master. Hawks reunites with John Wayne, playing a hired gun mixed up in a range war; Robert Mitchum is Wayne's old pal, now a sheriff in the midst of a hopeless drunken bender. James Caan, in one of his first sizable roles, plays a kid who can't shoot straight and wears a funny hat (every character in the movie makes fun of this hat). As the plot moves along, it begins to resemble Rio Bravo rather closely ("I steal from myself all the time," Hawks was fond of admitting). But in El Dorado the heroes are a bit older, their powers a bit weaker; at the end Wayne must revert to a bit of subterfuge in order to get the drop on the steely gunslinger (ice-cold Christopher George) he needs to put down. As relaxed as the movie is, Hawks and Wayne and company are in good spirits, with plenty of broad humor and easy camaraderie on display. Hawks and Wayne would make just one more film, the disappointing Rio Lobo, before ending their fruitful partnership. --Robert Horton