Andy in Sig said:
There was another good comedy western where Robert Mitchum (if memory serves) plays a drunken sheriff who has to sober up to resolve a crisis.
That film was "El Dorado", where they gave Robert Mitchum a concoction of gunpowder, and other ingredients whilst he was in the cell to sober him up and make drinking repulsive so he would chuck up every time he had a drink, legged it and locked him in before he reacted to it.
Oddly enough that film was a remake of John Wayne's "Rio Bravo" with Dean Martin playing the part of the drunken sheriff.
One other scene in one of John Wayne's cavalry trilogy which I can strongly relate to in real life, is where they raid the "Sutlers store" and Wayne finds some barrels of illegal whisky and appoints his sergeant major, an Irish man (who acted in a lot of Waynes films) who likes a good drink, to get rid of it, who promptly gets all his sergeants into the store room and tells them "a real sergeants job" and they promptly set about drinking it all, resulting in them all getting drunk and Wayne jailing them.
Whilst serving in Bosnia, there was a lot of drink problems at the time, the commander in the field blamed it on spirits and instructed us to return all unopened bottles and pour the rest down the drain, not us, in the sgts mess one night we supped the lot, in fact it took two nights but that's where the story ended for us as we never got jailed, just bad hangovers.
. Seriously, though - I find it terribly sentimental and (despite it being hailed for its sympathetic treatment of native Americans) I also find its racial and sexual politics on the patronising side. And I just don't like Costner, as an actor or a director. Am I being a bit harsh?
