El Dorado DVD > Reviews > The Road to El Dorado or Rio Bravo?

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Satisfactory
Characters / Performances	Satisfactory
Special Effects	Standard
How does it compare to similar films?	Satisfactory

Advantages:	Another good John Wayne Western
Disadvantages:	Storyline too similar to Rio Bravo for my liking

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

I've always loved Westerns, but it's only in the past year or so that I've become a particular fan of all Westerns that feature John Wayne. So I was overjoyed to find that one of his many films was being shown on Saturday afternoon TV last week - and that it was one of the films which I didn't already own on DVD.

Being as some smart-ass at BBC Scheduling ensured that it clashed with the Grand National, I recorded the film and sat down a couple of nights ago to watch it.

The film is set in Texas at a period just after a war. The story centres around John Wayne's character, a gunman who has been hired by Jason to take on the MacDonald family. MacDonald and his family (three sons and a daughter) own a large piece of land with their own source of water which Jason wants. Of course, Jason hasn't quite put it this way to Wayne, and so when the Sheriff (Robert Mitchum), who happens to be an old friend of Wayne's, puts him straight about the job, Wayne refuses it.

Unfortunately in the meantime MacDonald has heard that a gunman is coming into town for them and leaves his son on Wayne's route to warn the rest of the family when the stranger approaches. Wayne shoots the kid in self-defence, and takes him home to his family. Shortly after that he leaves town to find work, and hooks up with a young kid who's good at throwing a knife but terrible at shooting a gun. They hear that the Sheriff in El Dorado has had his heart broken and as a consequence is doing nothing but drinking all day and night. Because of this, Jason has hired another gunman, equally as fast as Wayne, and is planning on using the Sheriff's demise as his opportunity to take over the MacDonald land.

As Wayne feels guilty about the earlier death of MacDonald's son, he goes back to El Dorado with his young new friend to face up to Jason.

This has a reasonable storyline, and as ever, the Duke is great in his role. However, the story does become quite dragged out - while all the initial scene-setting does fall into place, I did wonder while watching the film if it was really necessary, and perhaps the film could have been written differently to incorporate these elements more concisely. It's also quite a long film for a Western: just over the two hour mark, and although I enjoyed the film, it did feel like a long two hours.

However, this may have something to do with the film's similarity to Rio Bravo. This film starred Dean Martin with John Wayne, where Dean Martin was the drunken sheriff and Wayne the friend who went in to help him. The main action also took place in the Sheriff's Office, where similarly, the four men of the law of the town are holed up with their prisoner, just as in this film. So this was a little disappointing for me, as I believe that Rio Bravo is a much more succinct and hence better film. Perhaps had I watched this film first I would have liked it better than I did.

I think had I purchased this film I would have been disappointed, given that there are so many Wayne films out there and I'd have two in my collection which have such similar storylines! However, on it's own merits it is a good film, with elements of humour and some good gun shooting action. If you've seen Rio Bravo though then this isn't one to keep high on your priority list unless you've got all of Wayne's other films and this is the last one you need to complete your collection. If however you're new to Westerns then this could be a good starting point: you can work up to watching some of the really good Wayne stuff.