El Dorado doesn't quite have the scope or ambition of Howard Hawks' greatest Westerns, Red River and Rio Bravo. But this relaxed picture, made near the end of Hawks' marvellous career, still shows the steady, sure hand of a master. Hawks reunites with John Wayne, playing a hired gun mixed up in a range war; Robert Mitchum is Wayne's old pal, now a sheriff in the midst of a ...
Big Jake is not one of the Duke's classics, but it's a diverting picture nonetheless. Everyone seems to think that Jacob McCandles is six-feet under ("I thought you was dead" is a running line throughout), so some bad men kidnap his grandson. They want a piece of the family fortune and will kill to get it. Patrick Wayne, the Duke's own son, plays one of Big Jake's kids, and together they ...