Pale Rider
[4K/Digital Code]
I’m struggling to find the true greatness of Clint Eastwood. I want to love the guy. I want to have the kind of perspective that’s, like “I love his spaghetti westerns and his transition from a western outlaw to an outlaw cop was successful due to so-and-so. Even his later output has highlights, like so-and-so.” But, I’m having a hard time getting a handle on this guy. Do I like Clint Eastwood movies? Yes. I like Unforgiven and Dirty Harry a lot. The man is clearly talented and quite the screen presence. It’s like John Wayne with a brain. And yet, there’s not much I’ve seen with him that has kept me wanting more. They’re all kind of slogs.
Pale Rider is another one of his acclaimed movies, and I came to it with high hopes, but here we go again, and right in the first 5 minutes, he kills a dog. That’s better than Josey Wales where he kills a FUCKING CHILD. Mind you, it’s not HIS character that does the killing, but the “bad guys.” My point is, that it’s hard to come back mentally from such an event and still be curious enough to be invested in what the movie has to show you.
Pale Rider does do a better job than Josey Wales, because there’s a little more mystery and, dare I say, hope, in this movie. Eastwood’s character The Preacher is, as he described himself, an out-and-out ghost. He comes out of nowhere, is infallible, fearless, moves and acts in a way that makes you think he’s magic, and has sex appeal to a degree that women and children are throwing themselves at him. It’s big of him to turn down the 13-year-old, but did he have to fuck Barret’s wife? What’s it to him?
I liked his movie a lot more than Josey Wales to the point where I’m still invested in Eastwood but now think I just got off on the wrong foot. I need to look elsewhere. Maybe it’s time to go back to the 60s.
