El Dorado (1966)
Directed by Howard Hawks
Cole Thornton, a gunfighter for hire, joins forces with an old friend, Sheriff J.P. Harrah. Together with a fighter and a gambler, they help a rancher and his family fight a rival rancher that is trying to steal their water.
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What critics compared El Dorado to
Robert Mitchum in El Dorado.
The graying gunfighters of David Webb Peoples's acutely observant script recall such classic films as John Ford's Searchers, Howard Hawks's El Dorado and Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country.
But try finding a sense of sacred history in Red River, Rio Bravo or El Dorado To Howard Hawks, the West often seemed to be nothing more than a convenient place where men could hang around and pretend to fight, though they really were in love with each other.
After Hawks made Rio Bravo (1959), Carpenter's cinematic holy grail, he went on to direct films like Hatari! (1962), Red Line 7000 (1965), and El Dorado (1967), which as my French friends will surely attest, seemed to work as allegories, or movies obsessed with the passionate process of making movies.
There is a story beloved in movie lore about the time Howard Hawks asked John Wayne to appear in " El Dorado ."
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The Dorothy Lamour role is filled by Rosie Perez, who gives her voice and spunky nature to Chel, a sexy El Dorado native who can out-con the con artists.
Boasting more attitude than Pocahontas and less insight, El Dorado is a hip entertainment (for adults as well as kids) that doesn't quite rise to the classic level of Beauty and the Beast or Pocahontas or Hercules.
In fact, “Logan Lucky” reminded me most of Howard Hawks’ “El Dorado,” in which the director basically just re-made his immortal “Rio Bravo” a few years later because it was a good story he felt like telling again.
While trying to recruit Robert Mitchum for his late Western "El Dorado," director Howard Hawks was asked by the actor what the story of the film was.
This formula would prove so resilient that Hawks would remake it in " El Dorado " (1966), John Carpenter would remake it as " Assault on Precinct 13 " (1976) and directors from Scorsese to Tarantino to Stone would directly reference it.
This late masterpiece (1966) by Howard Hawks is a virtual remake of Rio Bravo, just as Rio Bravo was a virtual remake of To Have and Have Not—only Hawks could make three great, and very different, films from one screenplay.
It's essentially a remake of Hawks' earlier Rio Bravo (with writer Leigh Brackett updating her own script).
In many ways the plot resembles Hawks' earlier Rio Bravo, and several of the themes are again present: the importance of group solidarity, self-respect, professionalism, and acceptance of others' faults.
This film suffered on its release by comparison to Hawks's earlier western masterpiece Rio Bravo, but with the passing of time this screen meditation on ageing proves to be one of the most pleasurable of all Hollywood movies.
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Despite a passing reference to John Wayne — and what feels like a hopeful invocation of Wayne’s later work with Howard Hawks — the characters are less “El Dorado” types and more like Cutie (Mr. Damon), Goofy (Mr. Murray), Starchy (Mr. Balaban), Boozy (Hugh Bonneville as Donald Jeffries), Frenchy (Jean Dujardin as Jean Claude Clermont) and Jewish Guy (Dimitri Leonidas as Sam Epstein).
It helps that Schwarzenegger has settled nicely into his age: He’s more convincing here as a gruff manager than he is as an action hero, the way that an aging John Wayne functioned in Howard Hawks films like Rio Bravo and Hatari! and El Dorado.