As so often with Howard Hawks, this is not quite an adventure about fliers in Barranca (it's just past El Dorado), but a phenomenal postmodern movie about a group of hip actors and moviemakers doing this silly Barranca story. Hawks prided himself on a very straightforward, honest style, but no one-until Godard-said so subtly, Don't forget, this is a movie, we're making it up, why don't you join us, step into the screen. And no one has ever made the process of putting on a show seem so exhilarating. But if we so long to be there, can it be daft? Well, yes, it can, but there's something else to offset the absurdity-the tautest way of talking and of looking at people there ever was. As with all the great Hawks movies, it could have been shot yesterday. And if angels need wings, why, pictures just need our belief and the director's lust for “fun.”