El Dorado
|
Our Price: $39.94 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $14.26 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of El Dorado
Movie Review: John Wayne Classic
Summary: 4 Stars
Fun to watch. Not Academy Award movie or acting, but just a good, fun western to end a busy day. Enjoyable.Movie Review: Very Quotable!
Summary: 4 Stars
John Wayne and James Mitchum were great in this movie. Lots of good humor and memorable quotes.Movie Review: Very entertaining
Summary: 4 Stars
If you like westerns and the Duke you will need this in your collection.Movie Review: The End of An Era
Summary: 3 Stars
The mid-1960s was a point of intersection for American movies. It is a bit of a lost era and one of the lowest points in Hollywood's history. It is situated long after the peak glories of the `golden age' of Hollywood and just before the New Hollywood movement that would breathe such new and invigorating life into the ailing medium. In many ways the films from this era are the ones which new filmmakers would react so strongly against; movies high in budget but sparse in originality, cast with aging movie stars playing worn characters; bloated, lifeless, and out of touch with the rapidly changing social climate of the day. "El Dorado", released in 1967, is most assuredly a film of this era. It is a western of such a standard concept that it could have been made thirty years prior. Its stars, John Wayne and Robert Mitchum, are well past their primes and here look stiff, heavy, and old. It is, like so many others of the time, a film that seems irrelevant and washed up; a product of `going through the motions.' Its one saving grace, however, is that it occasionally seems all too aware of this fact.
I say that Wayne and Mitchum seem tired and old. This is no doubt due in part to their actual age, but it is also because they are playing characters who are tired and old. Mitchum plays J.P. Harrah, the drunken sheriff of El Dorado, and Wayne, Cole Thornton, a long time friend and aging gunslinger. The two shuffle and trudge though the film in a way we modern film spectators would love to call them out on, but which is intentional nearly to the point of inspired. Wayne especially, who at one point even needs help mounting his horse, seems more than aware of his changing role in films, and is obviously set about to age gracefully. He would go on to do this notion great justice in 1976's "The Shootist", but we can see the seeds of this self-reflexivity even here, some ten year prior. Mitchum too plays his role as a drunk with a certain amount of moxie, both recognizing and poking fun at his own reputation. The film is not a pure comedy, however, and despite their limitations, both the actors and characters do their best to prove they still have it, and do so to a degree of success. The scenes of hung-over Mitchum and half-paralyzed Wayne shooting their way through the streets of El Dorado determined to hold their own are quite exciting and enjoyable, and it is this aspect of the movie, this negotiation with age and character, that brings its greatest successes.
But this does not save the film as a whole. Despite the apparent awareness of these actors that they are playing tired, worn characters, they are still playing tired, worn characters. And even if the characters have a certain added depth, both the direction and the screenplay certainly do not. The story is lifeless and dull, revolving around business disputes and questions of who is the fastest draw. Much of Wayne's dialogue, especially early in the film, sounds as if it were a compilation of dialogue from every other western he has made, and the movie as a whole feels as though it must have seemed badly dated even at the time of its release. Howard Hawks, that old master of the Hollywood western, tries to bring new life to the film though the quirky character of Mississippi, played by a young James Caan, and through some intentionally odd humour, but these attempts to be `hip' cannot help but feel heavy-handed and false, like a middle age man trying to seem `cool' for the kids. There are hints that Hawks could see a future for Westerns, particularly through this humour which seems somewhat a precursor to Leone and the spaghetti westerns, but for the most part he comes across as what he is: an ageing director trying, but ultimately failing, to make films the way he always has and yet keep current.
One need only put this movie into context to see its awkward place in cinematic history. It comes some ten years after the western peaked with "The Searchers" (1956) and some eight years after Hawks' own "Rio Bravo" (1959), which also starred Wayne and Mitchum, and was already a look back to the past glories of the genre. Two years after "El Dorado" Wayne starred in the painfully out of touch "The Green Berets" (1968), a film that would solidify Wayne's position outside of contemporary culture. Westerns themselves would soon be turned upside down and shaken by Sam Peckinpah and other young filmmakers who would more competently play with the conventions of the genre. But here is "El Dorado", firmly within the middle: a film aware enough of its own age to be interesting, but lacking enough ambition or energy to solve this dilemma. Some of it is quite enjoyable, and Wayne and Mitchum are often great to watch, but ultimately the film is as awkward and stiff as the many other films of its era.
Movie Review: There is some deliberate burlesque in Hawks' "El Dorado."
Summary: 3 Stars
In the Broken Saloon at El Dorado, two old friends, each with a reputation, meet again... But Sheriff J.P. Harrah (Robert Mitchum) greets Cole Thornton (John Wayne) with a pointed rifle... Harrah has heard his friend works now for Bart Jason (Edward Asner). Thornton admits Jason offered him good money but he doesn't know what he has to do to earn it...
Harrah explains that Jason showed up here around the end of the war with a pocketful of money and nobody could find out where he got it, but everybody else around here was broke... Having money, he started to grow... But now he needs more water... There's only one place to get it... Trouble is somebody was there ahead of him, about 20 years ahead... His name is Kevin MacDonald (R. G. Armstrong).
MacDonald got four boys and a girl... All worked real hard... They hung together through the rough times and how things were looking up, MacDonald was not ready to sell... So he's holding and Jason was pushing, and the sheriff was standing right in the middle...
Warned that Thornton has gone to Jason's, MacDonald has left his youngest boy out there to do a man's job... He went to sleep... When Cole came by, Luke (Johnny Crawford) woke up, jumped up and started firing his gun... All Cole was seeing was somebody shooting at him from the rocks... Thornton, thinking himself the target, shoots and drops the boy ... Luke explains the error then... To escape the pain of his mortal wound, he kills himself...
Thornton takes his body to his fathers' place, and after he explains what happened, his sister, Joey (Michele Carey), a wild cat in buckskin pants who didn't believe him, tried to kill him... Her brother stops her and her father asks her to get in the house...
After Thornton leaves the ranch, Joey (Michele Carey) ambushes Cole at a creek, dropping him with her riffle bullet... He manages to get back on his horse and escapes to Maudie's place, where Doc Miller (Paul Fix) treats him... The bullet was dangerous up against his spine, however, as Doc advises him to find a better surgeon for the bullet's removal...
After a short time, Thornton leaves El Dorado...
One of the best moments in the film came in a Cantina near the Mexican border when James Caan (Mississippi) enters the place and calls one of four men sitting at a dinner table, reminding him if he remembers him or if he remembers the blue hat he is wearing? Mississippi says he caught up with his other three companions and he killed them all, and that he was the last of the four... He asks him to stand up... and as the audience observed, Mississippi wasn't wearing, at all, any gun...
Obviously, when Jason just brought his outfit into town, the action started...
Robert Mitchum is 'the tin star with a drunk pinned on it.' He was too mad to be scared and too sick to worry about it..
Charlene Holt plays Maudie the gambler's widow who throws her arms around Cole, sees Harrah, and bursts out laughing when she finds her old flame and her current one are friends... She tells the sheriff that Cole gave her a stake, and helped her get on her feet...
Michele Carey plays Joey, the wild girl who thinks that Mississippi looks a lot better without that silly hat...
Christopher George plays Nelse McLeod, a dark, thin-faced man with a scar on his eye...
"El Dorado" was the third of four Westerns that Howard Hawks made with John Wayne... Hawks' massive reputation as a director of Westerns virtually rests on just two films ("Red River" & "Rio Bravo") but these two are sufficient to reveal a highly skilled, intuitive filmmaker, and one who has managed to satisfy large audiences and serious critics alike within a commercial system...