High Plains Drifter

Says the paradox: to save the just, you must make a pact with the Devil. Here Eastwood takes advantage of what he has learned in the spaghetti western with a plot that is fully attached to the genre. In some details they will seem inappropriate at the moment but it is not wasted.

Clint Eastwood became a star starring in Westerns, so it wasn't new to see him in this role. But being his second directorial movie, and his first Western, he worked quite safe, just doing what he learnt working as an actor in previous Westerns, especially "A **** of Dollars" (1964). . . The opening sequence is a homage to (and not a bland ripoff of) the opening of A **** of Dollars. In fact, the entire movie uses the template of A **** of Dollars, but in a really loose manner. It's not really one of the greatest Westerns ever, it's very good though. The story unfolds quite interestingly, and Eastwood has always been great when is an eye squinting badass. His badass-ery and the dynamics between him and the characters elevated the material quite a bit. The movie doesn't feel quite ambitious, in fact, it feels kinda amateur compared to later Westerns, like "The Outlaw Josey Wales" (1976) and "Unforgiven" (1992), Eastwood directed. Everything felt pretty okay, until the final twist elevated the movie a bit more. It wasn't a Se7en or Usual Suspects or The Sixth Sense kind of twist, but was good enough to make the things we watched look better in the end. . . The thing that was kind of stuck in my head was that the musical score and Eastwood's character - a mysterious messiah with unknown origins - in this movie was kinda "in you face" Dollars Trilogy reminiscence. Every Western before and after Sergio Leone's four absolutely great Westerns are bound to compared to the said four films. And, in my opinion, none of them are anywhere near those films. So, the music not being original isn't an issue, it could've been a little less obvious though. . . I give it a 7.8/10 (A-).

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.

This is a really mean-spirited movie. There's no 'good guy' character in it, and even those that are clearly meant to be are flawed to the point of being unable to root for. Well, there's one, but she's a side character with a limited role - everyone else are varying degrees of awful. Bizarrely, that also makes it a bit compelling as you watch, because it's not like pretty much any other movie in that regard. It revels in how terrible the people in it are. Clint Eastwood is great - his sneering delivery really suits the role he's in here, like a cowboy Dirty Harry, and he carries the whole movie on his back. But it falls apart with the script. It's nonsensical far too often, to the point it's hard to maintain a willing suspension of disbelief as the townspeople act like overwhelming cowards and idiots throughout. They come across as a bunch of modern softies teleported into the Wild West and being completely clueless about the realities of it. It's not a bad movie; it's just... offputting. It's worth watching to see Eastwood in this role, and to 'enjoy' something a bit different, but it's a terrible script and hamfisted allegory with a twist that makes little to no sense.

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 of characters, but in this instance he takes things to a whole new level. Here he's quick with guns of several varieties, mowing down three rowdy bar patrons and **** 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 town 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 a decade earlier.