Another of the movies that I think I recorded when Robert Mitchum was TCM's Star of the Month back in January is the western El Dorado. It's finally reached the top of my list of movies I've recently watched off the DVR, which means now is the time for the post on it.
Mitchum is one of the two above-the title stars. We see him after the opening credits, riding into the town of El Dorado, and going into a saloon. He asks the saloon-keeper about a tall man who came in on a particular horse, and we see that Mitchum's character is wearing a badge. He's the local sheriff, J.P. Harrah, and the guy who came riding in in an old friend and the other star above the title: Cole Thornton, played by John Wayne.
However, the two are kinda-sorta on separate sides. Cole was brought to town by one of the large landowners, Bart Jason (Ed Asner in one of his film roles before he spent a lot more time in TV). Cole expects to be a hired gun-hand, but Harrah informs him that the situation is actually quite a bit more complicated than that. Hannah tells him that there's one of those land wars going on, and that Jason is going up against another family, the MacDonalds. The MacDonalds have fallen on a bit of hard times, and Bart Jason is trying to get their land. But the MacDonalds are too proud to sell out, so Bart is trying to switch to more "active" forms of persuasion, which is why they've hired Cole. The sheriff is in the middle of it all, since there hasn't really been anything illegal done yet.
Cole, having heard all this, and trusting his old friend the sheriff, decides to ride out to Jason's spread to inform Bart that he's not going to take the job after all and return the expense money he'd already been given. But you can see himself already making an enemy when one of Jason's men sidles over to his horse to pick up a rifle. Cole is observant enough to see what's coming, and stops it without firing a shot, although that's also in part because Bart has at least a bit of common sense.
The MacDonalds have already heard about Bart's plan, so Cole is already an enemy in their minds, with them having no way of knowing that Cole has turned down the job. Kevin, the patriarch (R.G. Armstrong), has sent his youngest son Luke (Johnny Crawford) out to watch guard, but Luke, being too young, falls asleep, only being jarred awake by the approach of Cole and immediately shooting. Cole is a better shot, so his shot fatally injures Luke. This really ticks off Luke's sister Josephine (Michele Carey), who shoots Cole in a way that leaves him with a spinal injury that's going to get progressively worse.
Time passes, and Cole has left El Dorado. However, he runs into trouble when the gambler Traherne (James Caan) wants to avenge the gunmen who killed his gambler father some time back. The head of the gang, McLeod, has been hired by Bart Jason to do the job Cole wouldn't do. Worse, he informs Cole that in the intervening months, Sheriff Harrah has started to hit the bottle after being jilted by one of the women in town. So Cole, against his better judgment, is going to have to return to El Dorado both to try to keep the violence from erupting as well as to save his old friend the sheriff from likely death.
El Dorado was directed by Howard Hawks, and with him at the helm along with the cast he has here, it's easy to see how he's returning to a bunch of old themes that worked well in earlier westerns that he directed. So there's not really all that much new here, but at the same time the movie works precisely because of our familiarity with the themes and the professionalism of the cast.
El Dorado may not be remembered as an all-time great, but it's definitely better than a fair number of westerns out there.
No comments:
Post a Comment