High Plains Drifter

Day 106 - 4/16/09 - Movie #104

BEFORE: I know Clint Eastwood made a bunch of Westerns, but the only one I've seen is "Unforgiven". I taped this one to fill up the "Unforgiven" DVD I made, but I should probably add some of those old Sergio Leone films like "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" to my want list...

THE PLOT: A gunfighting stranger comes to the small settlement of Lago and is hired to bring the townsfolk together in an attempt to hold off three outlaws who are on their way.

AFTER: I know Eastwood's "Stranger with No Name" character is a tough guy, but when he rides into town, and kills 3 men and rapes a woman within the first 15 minutes of the film, it's a bit much. Weren't there any puppies to kick for good measure? There couldn't be anything to justify his actions - or could there? Turns out the town's got a dirty secret, the sheriff is completely useless, and some scorned outlaws are about to be released from prison. If only the mysterious stranger could somehow be persuaded to help defend the town (and I use the term "town" loosely, since it looks like Lago is made up of about 10 buildings)

This film hits a lot of the Western cliches well, but the Stranger's solution for dealing with the approaching invaders seems a lot like the end of "Blazing Saddles", when the residents of Rock Ridge built a replica of their whole town...(John Hillerman has a small role as a citizen in both films, that doesn't help.) There's also a weird symmetry here, for me, as character actor Geoffrey Lewis appears as one of the outlaws - he was also the lead villain in "The Shadow Riders" a couple nights ago.

But I thought that the morality in a Western was supposed to be very clear - the good guys wear the white hats, bad guys in black, etc. I was never really sure if the Stranger wanted to help the citizens of Lago, or extract revenge for their past injustices. If you have to destroy something in order to save it, how exactly is that any better than just destroying it? I kept expecting one of the citizens to say, "Hey, Stranger, please STOP helping us!"

RATING: 5 out of 10 shots of whiskey