Pale Rider (1985)
An American Western trying (and often succeeding) at being an archetypal example of the genre. Clint Eastwood is a maturing actor and director at this point, and the movie has a kind of heft of someone who knows the ropes and has a good crew.
But Eastwood as director maybe lacks perspective on his abilities, and he overwhelms the intelligence of the excellent cinematographer (Bruce Surtees, son of the legendary Robert) and the young be competent editor. Mostly this doesn't matter--the many rough edged character actors keep an Old West authenticity to the acting, and the sets and scenery are both true and real seeming. It's more the little decisions now and then that push you from the realism, and not in a stylized way other directors make obvious.
An example right away: when one man is shot, he gets a dozen or twenty bullets in him and is still alive and responsive. It takes a final bullet to the head to put him down like a dog. This is theatrics, and it's dramatic in a cheap way. Much of the movie is not cheap, but somehow Eastwood can't avoid himself.
Other example. The first scene is a classic, intelligent case of parallel editing--two separate stories told back and forth in tandem until they meet. We see the galloping bad guys interspersed with scenes of a small settlement of innocents. Suspense builds. We see the inevitable coming, and then it comes. Mayhem death and destruction.
So why do the two women have to act like idiots? I mean, there are a dozen horses ravaging the tents and buggies and people in the village and instead of running to the trees or just hiding, the two women are running through and between the horses, oblivious to their danger, the younger one of them mindlessly looking for her dog. It's sentimentally nice, but it doesn't seem right. Or smart.
The women actually serve as props for manly expressions throughout, from the 14 year old hitting sexually on Eastwood (his ego is unbridled, but the character, flattered, avoids such obvious abuse) to her mother wanting, just once, to know what making love to this great paradigm is all about (before marrying the much nicer fellow who loves her a lot).
I don't mean to put too much emphasis on what doesn't work here. The movie overall is a masculine, beautiful western in the updated sense of later westerns, anything after "The Wild Bunch." Eastwood always enjoys playing the unorthodox hero. The enemy is a corporate kind of presence, a ruthless mining company with no environmental tenderness. The archetypes of good and bad people run wild here, and if you let them it's fine.
So really we have what is another reworking of familiar themes from the genre, well enough done to keep it afloat if you turn a blind eye now and then.
An American Western trying (and often succeeding) at being an archetypal example of the genre. Clint Eastwood is a maturing actor and director at this point, and the movie has a kind of heft of someone who knows the ropes and has a good crew.
But Eastwood as director maybe lacks perspective on his abilities, and he overwhelms the intelligence of the excellent cinematographer (Bruce Surtees, son of the legendary Robert) and the young be competent editor. Mostly this doesn't matter--the many rough edged character actors keep an Old West authenticity to the acting, and the sets and scenery are both true and real seeming. It's more the little decisions now and then that push you from the realism, and not in a stylized way other directors make obvious.
An example right away: when one man is shot, he gets a dozen or twenty bullets in him and is still alive and responsive. It takes a final bullet to the head to put him down like a dog. This is theatrics, and it's dramatic in a cheap way. Much of the movie is not cheap, but somehow Eastwood can't avoid himself.
Other example. The first scene is a classic, intelligent case of parallel editing--two separate stories told back and forth in tandem until they meet. We see the galloping bad guys interspersed with scenes of a small settlement of innocents. Suspense builds. We see the inevitable coming, and then it comes. Mayhem death and destruction.
So why do the two women have to act like idiots? I mean, there are a dozen horses ravaging the tents and buggies and people in the village and instead of running to the trees or just hiding, the two women are running through and between the horses, oblivious to their danger, the younger one of them mindlessly looking for her dog. It's sentimentally nice, but it doesn't seem right. Or smart.
The women actually serve as props for manly expressions throughout, from the 14 year old hitting sexually on Eastwood (his ego is unbridled, but the character, flattered, avoids such obvious abuse) to her mother wanting, just once, to know what making love to this great paradigm is all about (before marrying the much nicer fellow who loves her a lot).
I don't mean to put too much emphasis on what doesn't work here. The movie overall is a masculine, beautiful western in the updated sense of later westerns, anything after "The Wild Bunch." Eastwood always enjoys playing the unorthodox hero. The enemy is a corporate kind of presence, a ruthless mining company with no environmental tenderness. The archetypes of good and bad people run wild here, and if you let them it's fine.
So really we have what is another reworking of familiar themes from the genre, well enough done to keep it afloat if you turn a blind eye now and then.