Thursday, March 21, 2013

El Dorado Silverado

El Dorado: A variation on Rio Bravo, by Howard Hawks, with Robert Mitchum in the Dean Martin role, James Caan as Ricky Nelson, Arthur Hunnicutt as Walter Brennan and Charlene Holt as Angie Dickinson. John Wayne is still John Wayne. It even has the same scene of a bad guy being shot and hiding in a saloon and the sheriff going in after him. But they're not able to recapture lightning in a bottle, the magic is mostly gone.

Silverado: The first time I saw this film, by Lawrence Kasdan, I didn't care for it too much, but rewatching it now, it's actually pretty good. It's more of a pastiche, though, with Kasdan putting in every scene he loved from watching Westerns as a kid, leading up to the gun duel at the end. There's something slightly mechanical about the film, and politically correct as well. But there's also the guy falling off the roof scene, so I can't really complain.

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