Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s installment of A Movie A Day.
[For those now joining us, A Movie A Day is my attempt at filling in gaps in my film knowledge. My DVD collection is thousands strong, many of them films I haven’t seen yet, but picked up as I scoured used DVD stores. Each day I’ll pull a previously unseen film from my collection or from my DVR and discuss it here. Each movie will have some sort of connection to the one before it, be it cast or crew member.]
Today we follow Ed Asner from yesterday’s obscure Sidney Lumet drama DANIEL to a slightly less obscure Howard Hawks western starring John Wayne called EL DORADO.
Going into this movie I had RIO BRAVO on the brain because of a dialogue that started up in the AMAD talkbacks when I covered RIO BRAVO in the early days of this column. I had heard of EL DORADO, of course… who hasn’t? But I wasn’t aware that it was a reteaming of the core creative force of RIO BRAVO and considered a semi-remake of RIO BRAVO.
You have John Wayne returning to star, Howard Hawks returning to direct and Leigh Brackett returning to write, but you also have a story that has some extremely similar characters and plot points. Wayne in the lead, a drunk side-kick trying to shake off the drink to win back his dignity and the respect of his friends and enemies alike, a strong female love-interest, a young, flashy gunslinger, a wise-cracking old deputy and an evil, rich and powerful baddie who is held in prison as his posse tries to find an angle to rescue him or assassinate his captors. All that adds up to a similar experience as RIO BRAVO, but it’s not as similar as I expected going in.
I wouldn’t even go so far as to call this an unofficial remake, but more an early attempt at a reboot. Wayne is a radically different character, a gun for hire instead of a sheriff, but he plays it with pretty much the same moral code as John T. Chance. James Caan fills in the role of Wayne’s young-gun sidekick, with a noticeable change… well, for one, Caan is a much, much, much better actor than Rick Nelson, but they also give him a great character twist: He’s no good with a gun.
His weapon of choice is a knife, which I loved and honestly wish they did more with, but I can’t complain. Wayne takes him to visit a Swedish gunsmith (no shit) about halfway through the movie where he is given a gun that can’t miss whatever it’s aimed at. It’s a sawed off shotgun that packs a fuck of a punch… it like a portable havok machine, ripping up everything in its sights.
Robert Mitchum plays the drunk sheriff (as opposed to the drunk deputy played by Dean Martin in RB) about the same, but on top of a shift of characters and character dynamics they also rework the structure.
We get a lengthy set-up to the main story, that of locking up the town’s resident villain (played by Ed Asner, of all people) while his gang is outside trying to force him out, that has Asner initially trying to hire Wayne to be his lead gunman. In fact the opening of the movie is Mitchum confronting Wayne, rifle in hand, demanding to know why he’s in town, who’s side Wayne’s on.
Turns out Asner has it out for a particular family that had settled on a plot of land and for almost two generations have worked hard and waited for prosperity. When it finally comes, Asner tries to intimidate them off of it, willing to go as far as murder the entire family… and it’s a big damn family.
But Mitchum’s Sheriff JP Harrah is always in his way. When Wayne finds out that part of the deal is to take out his friend, the Sheriff, he declines Asner’s offer, but not before word starts around the little town that he’s been hired by Asner as an assassin.
That word gets back to the MacDonald family, those poor bastards who are doing everything they can to keep what’s rightfully theirs, and the patriarch leads his horses back home, leaving one of his younger sons to stand watch. The boy is supposed to fire a shot in the air if he sees someone approaching, but he ends up falling asleep and is startled when Wayne comes riding throught he canyon.
The boy’s reaction is to take a shot at Wayne, who returns fire without even thinking and finds he has gut-shot this boy, a kid that can’t be much older than 16. The boy ends up dying, but not before talking with Wayne a bit, at least for him to know who he belongs to.
Then Wayne has to deliver the boy’s body to his father (RG Armstrong) and try to explain the situation. Forgiveness is given by the father, but not by one of the boy’s sisters, the fiery Michele Carey, who goes after Wayne.
She takes a shot at him and it actually hits, which gives Wayne an injury that comes back to haunt him, striking at the most inopportune moment in the last act of the movie.
This makes for a very interesting turning of common formula. Some 6 or 7 months pass inbetween act 1 and act 2 and we have Wayne with a bullet resting against his spine, causing him sever spasms and partial paralysis at random moments and you have Mitchum’s character, who goes from badass, completely together JP to incompetant drunkard, which gives us much more handicapped heroes than expected.
In RIO BRAVO, Dean Martin was a mess when we first meet him and his journey is explored much more thoroughly, but Mitchum isn’t given that much luxury, so what they end up doing is make him much more extremely affected. It’s almost more like he is high on meth than just constantly drunk.
I’m sure there must be a PULP FICTION Bealtes or Elvis thing going on between RIO BRAVO and EL DORADO, people constantly arguing which is the better movie. I have to say, like a proud parent, I love them both, but I will admit that RIO BRAVO has the edge for me.
There’s something to RIO BRAVO, a class and elegance, that is lacking in EL DORADO, even if EL DORADO has a much more layered and interesting young sidekick in James Caan’s Mississippi. Arthur Hunnicut is great in the Walter Brennan role, but Brennan is hands down the best character actor and gives so much personality to the bitter, complaining, but loyal deputy that I just can’t help but give the edge to RIO BRAVO.
It’s mostly in Howard Hawks’ filmmaking, though. EL DORADO is very inventive, but Hawks doesn’t nail the iconography he was able to in RIO BRAVO. However, it’s almost pointless trying to compare and contrast these movies and I feel bad for doing it. Both movies are great and if you mash them up together I think they fill each others’ weaknesses very well, which leads me to believe that an amalgam of both movies makes the perfect version of this story, with most of it being RIO BRAVO for it’s perfect pace, iconography, score, cinematography, but also EL DORADO trading in some of it’s far superior casting, most notably with James Caan’s character.
Final Thoughts: Great little movie and a perfect double feature with RIO BRAVO. It is just different enough to not make itself feel like a complete retread of RIO BRAVO, but not so different that it’s unrecognizable. A real fun, entertaining and often times beautiful movie. Definitely give it a shot.
Here’s what we have lined up for the next week:
Saturday, November 15th: THE GAMBLER (1974)
Sunday, November 16th: ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (1984)
Monday, November 17th: SALVADOR (1986)
Tuesday, November 18th: BEST SELLER (1987)
Wednesday, November 19th: THE HOLCROT COVENANT (1985)
Thursday, November 20th: BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ (1962)
Friday, November 21st: WHITE HEAT (1949)
There's another classic we'll be hitting on the AMAD column, White Heat. But first we have a James Caan-a-thon, which leads into a James Woods-a-paloosa. It's a man's man week, I guess. See you folks tomorrow for THE GAMBLER, following Mr. Jimmy the Dream Caan.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
