High Plains Drifter

"Your feet ma'am are almost as big as your mouth."

Damn this is one mean spirited western. I did not expect that at all but it is an entertaining one. High Plains Drifter is just so damn brutal. Every character basically is out for his or herself, the town of Lago is one horrible place to live. I do think the town looked better when it was painted over.

Anyway even when Clint Eastwood plays such a horrible person he still oozes cool. There is just something about the man not many people have. The way he shoots those guys at the barber, epic stuff.

Anyway the townspeople of Lago needed someone to save their town and they gave up everything for it. It is bizarre to see. You think you've met the worst person but everyone is horrible. You almost want the returning "bad guys" to win.

Best part? The damn ending. I love the mystery it provokes and I was so happy this one showed up on Netflix this week. Never expected to watch a Western but damn I should watch them even more.

Ps. Mordecai for president!

Clint Eastwood again in his classic Western role: The quiet, cool super-cowboy. This movie could also be called “The magnificent one with a twist”. Clint is actually hired to protect weak townspeople and takes advantage of the situation, though it is for a long time not clear what his real motives are. Excellent entertainment and a must for fans of the man.

I don't have much to say about 'High Plains Drifter'. It didn't thrill me or anything, but it did keep my attention from start-to-finish so it's evidently a good film.

Clint Eastwood is the only cast member worth talking about, he gives a commanding performance in the lead role. Geoffrey Lewis, a frequent castmate of Eastwood's, is the best of the rest, if I had to pick. The film does feature dark themes, which helps the film's pacing out a lot.

It's nothing special in my eyes, though there is entertainment there no doubt. It's a borderline 8* rating for me, but not quite.

Clear predecessor of his masterpiece Without forgiveness.

While this was a good movie, I think you would be better served with Pale Rider. [spoiler] Not sure why the townsfolk were being trained because they didn't manage to hold their own. Just felt like filler. The Stranger gets his revenge and rides off disappearing into the countryside. [/spoiler]

Eastwood was never better here as the cool yet pragmatic stranger who's very anonymity makes him both mysterious and threatening to everyone he ruins into, friend or foe.

Interesting movie, there are a good amount of cheesy bits, as it is with most spaghetti westerns, but they are all good in that familiar campy way. It has a version of the High Noon plot, where a guy is supposed to save a town from a group of guys with a grudge. However it differs in a key aspect, the guy being hired also have a sort of grudge against most of the townsfolk. The action is good, the way they put the flashbacks in was well done, the acting was solid, and the villains are great.

Strange, ambiguous picture that I found only intermittently interesting (primarily because I find it hard to connect with Eastwood more generally.) Mostly forgettable.

Clint Eastwood stars and directs in this shameless Leone homage from the early '70s. Eastwood's unnamed horse-mounted strangers have never been the friendliest characters in the west, but in this instance he takes things to a whole new level. He's quick with guns of several varieties, mowing down three rowdy bar patrons and raping a bystander in the film's uncomfortable opening scene, then settling in to take the surviving villagers for all they're worth when he's hired for protection. As it turns out, the village has a few dirty secrets of its own, and its leaders soon resort to a wide variety of veiled threats and bumbling backstabs to keep them quiet. That leaves absolutely no one in the clear as a moral compass, even the twisted preacher, and the film soon settles in to spinning lazy circles like a rudderless ship.

Misogynistic, mean-spirited and narrow, it's not a whole lot of fun to watch beyond a few sporadic action shots and one or two well-placed puns. A far cry from the unspoken atmosphere, dense moral grey area and thick, palpable character of the Spaghetti Westerns that made Clint's name in the mid '60s.

Revelation 6:8 : I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him