El Dorado (1966), directed by Howard Hawks. Tuesday, March 14, streaming at home.

El Dorado, not to be confused with the awful Dreamworks cartoon of 2000, is basically a remake of Rio Bravo, another Howard Hawks western with a bunch of pals sittin’ around and yakking and trying to make the world a better place by putting away the bad guys. John Wayne’s Cole and Robert Mitchum’s J.P. used to go around committing hijinks and making friends with beautiful ladies on tight-fitting corsets before settling down. J.P. becomes a drunk and can’t do his job, so Cole comes to town to help. Along the way they meet a dude named Mississippi (James Caan).There’s other characters, too.

Hawks’ great mantra was “three great scenes and no bad ones”, and that sums up El Dorado. This movie is fun as hell, expertly played, three terrific scenes, including a gunfight in a church belfry where the bullets keep striking the bells, making them sing. It’s hilarious, some of the dialogue and retorts strange and amusing–pieces of this film feel like it’s very modern (sadly, others make it terribly dated). Mitchum is great in whatever he does, but Wayne had a great benefactor in Howard Hawks. Wayne’s Cole is a graceful, muscular force that you’ll happily follow through the 2+ hours of this movie. El Dorado was a product, but a really good one, a fun machine that celebrates genuine people and what they can do, and we don’t have enough of that today. If I had to make a top ten list, it might not have a Howard Hawks movie on it. But if I made a top 100, there’d be more by him than any other director.