High Plains Drifter (1973)

High Plains Drifter

This is Clint Eastwood at his imcomparable best. To me, it even outranks "Unforgiven." October 5, 2008

"Urghh, He Sure Had A Lot of Blood Left In Him, Didn't He?"

'High Plains Drifter' is my very favourite Eastwood movie.(and that's saying something) I especially like the dark humour and ambiguity, but in truth, there's not much I don't like.
You just know something bad is gonna happen, as soon as you see him appearing through the desert heat-haze in the eerie title sequence, and by the time the film ends, with the same shot in reverse (a la 'the Searchers') something bad has!
In between, we're treated to much violence, sexism, adultery, hypocrisy and general wretchedness from the Lago townsfolk, and they're supposed to be the victims!
These people are dire, far worse than the actual villains, (who are gold-star nasty in a traditional sense.) they stood and watched as their sheriff, the only honest character in the film, was whipped to death in the street.
In essence, 'High Plains Drifter' is a cross between 'Witchfinder General', 'High Noon' and 'the Omen', only with lashings more unpleasantness. The main difference being, there's people to cheer for in those films. There's no-one here. Even the 'hero' is a cruel, merciless killer, who is himself in no moral position to deliver salvation OR retribution to the cowering townsfolk.
And who is he? The murdered sheriff's avenging kin? His ghost? The devil? The plot leads us up all the various avenues and alleyways but in the end, it doesn't really matter. We're just glad that everyone who deserves retribution - gets it! The doing-good-via-bad cliché is hammered home, but again we don't really care. We know right will out eventually, however perversely,(hopefully brutally!) because Eastwood's with the programme.
Visually, the films superb. The town appears condensed, like a vacuum, especially when Eastwood demands it be painted red. It's not the traditional homely Western hamlet, which deserves to be defended by brave men for whom it's worthwhile giving their lives. It's a bleak, soul-less outpost, desperate and afraid of it's own shadowy secrets and the fact they're returning to haunt it when it thought they were buried with the sheriff. Bruce Surtees camerawork effortlessly conveys this - and more.(let's not give Eastwood ALL the credit) We get a very real sense of the artless, cuboid structures and the creepy inhabitants deserving each other.
Performance-wise, Eastwood plays Eastwood with a twisted comic bravado, (he knows he's distorting the western myth, by subverting the very iconography and legend that built it in the first place) he prowls the streets like Ann Coulter on the look-out for liberals, a cold glint as another low-life bites the dust.
Geoffrey Lewis is grotesquely brilliant as the drunken, heartless, leering chief-baddy, and the rare Verna Bloom is handsome and sassy as the rebellious wife of one of Lago's slimy conspirators.
There's blood by the bucket, roaring gun-fights, an inevitable,(but well-staged) all consuming fire, seriously nasty whippings and there's even a squalid, squeaky-voiced dwarf who, along with some 'pesky injun savages', are the only people to benefit from the 'drifter's' brief tenure.
'High Plains Drifter' is a delirious amalgam of all that's small and sleazy in our sugar-veneered world. A cynical, yet not completely hopeless vision of mankind in general, which is as valid and relevant now as when Eastwood shot it.
July 26, 2008

Classic Eastwood

This is a classic Eastwood film. If you're a fan of others such as Hang 'Em High, or the Man with No Name trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good The Bad and The Ugly), then this is a good one for you. February 8, 2008

eastwood again

what can a man say, about eastwod? you just know I added this to my westerns collection,... February 6, 2008

classic

One of the all time best westerns. Even if you don't like westerns, you might enjoy this one. January 21, 2008

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