Cole Thornton (John Wayne) is a hired gun with an offer to get involved in a range war. The local sheriff, J.P. Harrah (Robert Mitchum), is an old friend, so Thornton declines the job, but not before word that he's around reaches the other family in the war. Through a series of unfortunate events, the MacDonald family ends up with one dead son, and Thornton ends up with a bullet against his spine.
The local sawbones can't remove the bullet, so, ignoring advice to find a more skilled doctor, Thornton rides off to another job. When that concludes some months later, he runs into another gunfighter, Nelse McLeod (Christopher George), who plans to take the job Thornton turned down. McLeod figures now is the time to strike, as Harrah's become a drunk after getting dumped. So Thornton, with a switchblade-chucking, fast-talking kid everyone calls Mississippi (James Caan) hustles back to save his friend's neck, and maybe settle this range war in the process.
At least when talking to my dad, this movie gets grouped with Rio Bravo (which we'll get to one day) and Rio Lobo (which we probably won't) as an unofficial trilogy of Westerns director Howard Hawks did with John Wayne, due to certain similarities in plot, characters, and structure.
I don't remember Rio Lobo well enough to compare, but between this movie and Rio Bravo, both feature a friend of Wayne's character that's become a drunk off-screen over a woman, there's a quirky deputy (Arthur Hunnicut here, playing I guess an old cavalry scout who's always talking about bad feelings he got when there was gonna be Injun trouble), and a hotshot kid who has no connection with the mess but deals himself in anyway. The bad guy is a big rancher with a lot of money to hire guns to do his fighting for him (Ed Asner here.) There's a part where the good guys adopt a siege mentality, trying to hunker down in the jail with their prisoner until a federal marshal arrives, a part where the drunk gets to confront and show up the guys who scoffed at him, and a romantic subplot.
Of course, there's a lot of ways you can go with all that. El Dorado is a more diffuse movie than Rio Bravo, as it takes nearly half the running time for Thornton and Mississippi to return to the town of El Dorado and see what's become of Harrah (as Thornton puts it, 'a tin star, with a drunk pinned on it'.) The heroes' attempt to hunker down falls apart quickly here, mostly because they don't stay in jail, and they actually lose their prisoner in the process. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
The romance subplot is perfunctory, and split between Thornton and a local saloonkeeper (played by Charlene Holt), and the beginning of something between Mississippi and the youngest daughter of the MacDonalds (played by Michele Carey), who is also the one who shot Thornton in the back. Hawks reuses a line from Rio Bravo - 'I always make you mad, don't I?', but gives it to Caan rather than Wayne's love interest. The bad guys actually have, in McLeod, a guy played as a credible threat, especially with Harrah still drying out and Thornton erratically losing feeling in the right side of his body. I was not clear why a bullet against the left side of his spine was fucking up his right side, but it does.
The benefit of the more diffuse nature is it allows a greater sense of stakes. Thornton isn't just there to save his friend, he also feels a debt for what happened with the MacDonald's son, and knows McLeod's presence will tip things decisively in Bart Jason's favor unless there's someone to counter him, i.e., Thornton. McLeod, beyond being there for the money, has an urge to see who's faster between he and Thornton. Harrah doesn't just have to prove to himself and his friends he's worth something, he has to prove it to the town. When he arrives on the scene after another of the MacDonalds is wounded, the father is incredulous at the idea the sheriff is going to do anything. No one speaks against that notion in Harrah's defense, because he hasn't shown he's worth it.
The climax is a surprise, mostly because McLeod gives Thornton the chance to step down from the wagon he's driving to try and prove he can outdraw McLeod with a useless gun arm. The rest of the heroes use this distraction to sneak in and free a hostage, then Thornton dives off the wagon and shoots from the ground, behind the horses. It feels like a dirty trick the antagonist would pull, but it's John Wayne doing it, to a guy who was willing to give him the chance to settle things man-to-man. Granted, we don't know if McLeod would have been so sporting if Thornton were fully healthy, but he ignored Bart Jason's orders to just kill the man right off, so I think he would have. He wanted to know if he could win, but there were higher stakes than either man's ego, so good sportsmanship is sacrificed.
Caan's character is mostly there for comic relief. He gets a decent introduction, as one of McLeod's guys is the last man responsible for killing Mississippi's father figure, and Mississippi kills the guy with a switchblade hidden in his collar. (I thought, when they were sneaking in, he might show off the knife throwing again to silently take out a guard, but no.) After that, it's all jokes about how he can't shoot worth a shit, even with an extremely-sawed-off shotgun, or about his hat, or how no one can remember his real name. He has to introduce himself to Harrah three times, as the man's brain is so pickled he's lost the capacity to remember faces or voices.
Mitchum is plays a sour-faced, ill-tempered wreck, but he sells it. The man really looks like he's been living without a care for himself. Big bags under the eyes, greasy hair, walking around in his raggedy, ill-fitting undershirt. John Wayne is pretty much your standard "John Wayne in a Western" performance. The biggest presence in the room, gruff and frequently annoyed with the foolishness around him, but able to smile occasionally.
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