This could easily have been a flop. One of the last movies directed by Howard Hawks, it looked a lot like his earlier westerns, which didn't fit the mood of the late '60s. John Wayne was getting too old to pass for a hired gunman. He didn't get along well with Ed Asner and had previously given trouble to Robert Mitchum. The film took longer than projected to complete. And despite a delayed release in order not to compete with another Wayne film, it wound up competing with yet another. (Dude did have quite a run, even in later years.) But it still performed well at the box office and has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, so I had to check it out.
In and near the titular city, Cole Thornton (Wayne) gets caught up in a battle for territory between the rightful McDonald clan and the outlaws under Bart Jason (Asner), including noted sharpshooter Nelse McLeod (Christopher George). Between the influences of buddy Sheriff J.P. Harrah (Mitchum) and on-and-off lover Maudie (Charlene Holt), Cole picks the good side. He soon enlists the help of newcomer nicknamed Mississippi (James Caan), who does much better with a knife than with a gun. Unfortunately, as aged Deputy Bull (Arthur Hunnicutt) reports, J.P. is usually too drunk to be of any use. And a bullet near Cole's spine, which he hasn't found time to treat properly, sometimes paralyzes part of him....
As western plots go, it's not very subversive or innovative. Indeed, it could just about pass for a remake of Rio Bravo, which has the same lead, director, and writer, the last being Leigh Brackett. Brackett had composed something more original and timely, and some of the darkness remains in the final cut; for example, Cole gets his wound due to crude vengeance after a tragic misunderstanding. She liked the story less the more familiar it became. Bull even resembles Walter Brennan's character to a fair extent.
Several moments seem to owe something to other earlier movies, whether in homage or sheer derivation. J.P.'s humor-laden drinking problem reminded me of Cat Ballou, and his bath scene seems like an elaboration on part of The Searchers. On a more obviously deliberate level, there's a shout-out to the Hawks/Brackett classic The Big Sleep.
From the opening credits overlaying paintings of the Old West with a rather cherished theme song, I got the impression that ED was like Shane, penning a beautiful love letter to the genre without offering anything very fresh. Heck, the Technicolor sometimes comes in thick enough to look like a painting in motion. Well, it's not quite that. More like the compromise it turned out to be. It does throw in a few things I didn't see coming, which partly had the effect of making me feel like the story was wrapping up when it wasn't.
IMDb lists quite a few errors, some of them sloppy enough to merit a mention in the trivia section. The makers themselves noticed a few and decided to keep them in, if only for laughs. Does it work? A little, but I won't add a comedy tag. You could probably find just as much amusement in the repartee of many other Wayne hits.
But if you like the oldies as much as I do (and perhaps find many later westerns off-putting), you won't really mind how similar ED is to more famous hits. You may even enjoy it better in some ways. Whatever the failings of the people involved by that time, they still had plenty of talent to pool together.
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