El Dorado

El Dorado (1966) is the Howard Hawks Western you can watch online on iFILM, starring John Wayne as gun-for-hire Cole Thornton. He rides into the town of El Dorado expecting a paycheck. He leaves having picked the opposite side of the fight.

Rancher Bart Jason wants the McDonald family's water and tries to buy Thornton's trigger finger. Thornton turns him down. The catch: the local sheriff, J.P. Harrah, is Cole's old friend and a hopeless drunk, more useful to a bar stool than a badge. So Thornton patches together a ragtag posse to stand against Jason's hired guns. Robert Mitchum plays the soused sheriff; a young James Caan turns up as a kid who can't shoot to save his life and carries a knife instead.

This is essentially Hawks remaking his own Rio Bravo, the same siege, the same dry humor, the same loyalty between worn-out men. The difference is the wear: Thornton's gun hand goes numb mid-fight and the sheriff's hands shake from the bottle. It's the warmest of the studio's late Westerns. Stream El Dorado (1966) online on iFILM.