El Dorado
Directed by Howard Hawks
Written by Lee Brackett from a novel by Harry Brown
1966/US
Paramount Pictures/Laurel Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant
[box] Sheriff J. P. Harrah: What the hell are you doin’ here?
Cole: I’m lookin’ at a tin star with a… drunk pinned on it.[/box]
This is basically Rio Bravo (1959) with a bit of a role reversal. I prefer the earlier film but you really can’t miss with John Wayne and Robert Mitchum.
Sheriff J.P. Harrah (Mitchum) has been on a two-month bender since a romance ended badly. His old friend Cole Thornton (Wayne) is working as a gun for hire. Thornton comes to town at the request of Bart Jacobs (Ed Asner) who is trying to steal water from a family of farmers. He thinks better of it after talking to Harrah.
For the rest of the film, Harrah and Thornton team up to fight Jacobs and the other guns he eventually hires. But first Thornton must sober the sheriff up. He also flirts mildly with the town saloon owner. James Caan in the Ricky Nelson part, Arthur Hunnicutt in the Walter Brennan part and Charlene Holt in the Angie Dickinson part.
John Wayne apparently lobbied hard to play the drunken sheriff. Now that would have made an interesting movie! As it is, we get the kind of solid, traditional Western that could have been made years earlier.
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