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Basically a remake of Rio Bravo with only two of the same players involved – director Howard Hawks and star John Wayne – and immensely inferior in just about every aspect, I think only the biggest and strictest of fans of Wayne will find much to enjoy about this. Maybe it’s that this exact same story isn’t as fresh or invigorating the second time around, or maybe it’s the characters don’t have the same chemistry or development as they did the first time out. I couldn’t tell you exactly what is missing, but El Dorado is very much the weaker film.
I think some of the problem is that El Dorado trades out Ricky Nelson, Dean Martin, Walter Brennan, and Angie Dickinson for James Caan, Robert Mitchum, Arthur Hunnicutt, Charlene Holt, and Michele Carey. Caan and Mitchum are actors of tremendous depth when given a meaty role, but they seem adrift here. Mitchum’s always at his greatest when he is allowed to show the sympathetic sides of dark characters, or allowed to go full-on charismatic in villainous modes. Holt doesn’t have the tenacity or sarcasm of Dickinson, while Carey is just bad and her makeup is distractingly modern for a western. For a film about hanging out this group of actors seem too disparate to even congeal together. Nelson and Martin understood that they were playing to their personas, and that their acting was to be pitched at movie star charisma, Caan does not, being too intense for everyone else.
But one cannot fault Hawks’ craftsmanship at this point in his life. Even if he seems to be running on autopilot Hawks still manages to get decent work from his major star, and does solid work with the various colors. The last shot, of Wayne and Mitchum walking off arm-in-arm, is a great one. On its own merits El Dorado is a halfway decent movie, operating as a nice time waster and nothing more. It’s when we compare it to Rio Bravo that the weaknesses of it are put into sharpest contrast, and while it’s bad to compare them to each other it can’t be helped. The strongest sense of déjà vu pervades the entire film after the first 15 minutes and only gets stronger from there.
