High Plains Drifter DVD > Reviews > Do hero's really wear white hats?

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Story	Outstanding
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Good
How does it compare to similar films?	Outstanding

Advantages:	The perfect western
Disadvantages:	none

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

High Plains Drifter is a classic western. It has a strong lead character who is the classic gunfighter, cold, emotionless and completely ruthless. It also has a strong supporting cast who again play the classic western towns people, scared, self promoting, submissive and equally ruthless in a passive way, all the classic ingredients. So why is this western so very different to anything else that came before it and after it?

In the old days, westerns all followed a standard format. The main players were always clearly defined, the good guys were strong, moralistic characters who helped those weaker than themselves and the bad guys were always ruthless, evil bullies or deadly gunfighters who shot and killed innocent people just for money or where the fat, evil business man who employed them, etc.

It was very black and white and indeed in many films, the good guys actually worn white or light coloured hats and the bad guys, black or dark clothing. There were of course a few exceptions but generally they followed the same format and of course the good guys always won in the end, the endings were always the same and sometimes the good guy would ride off into the sunset, sometimes he would stay with his love interest or sometimes he would die of his wounds, having just saved the town or people from the ruthless enemy.

Then the Spagetti Westerns hit the screen and changed the format forever. Now you could get away with a character who was the hero but was himself, flawed and equally as ruthless as the bad guys, Clint Eastwoods character in all three Spagetti Westerns was a bounty hunter, a ruthless killer who killed people for money.

Okay they were all wanted men who have killed others, but he was dressed and behaved very differently to the normal good guys, he was unshaven, with stubble, his clothes had seen better decades and in the first of the three movies, he rode into town on a beaten up old mule, not even a large white horse called Blue..........he was not exactly a man in a white hat but he did have a good side and although not an angel, he was not as ruthless as the bad guys he hunted down, but what really set the Spagetti Western apart was that they let you, the viewer get into the film and especially the minds of the players, it was as though you were actually in the movies yourself.

The scene in a Fist full of Dollars where the Eastwood character goes up to the five men who had fired at his mule when he first entered the town and shoots them all dead, is one example of this, the camera angle is from his guns perspective and allows you to follow his aim as he shoots them. Up untill this point all western before this just showed the characters shooting at their targets from a distance, making you feel detacted, in a Fist full of Dollars you felt that it was you shooting the gun and this made you feel as though your were actually part of the movie, thats one of the reasons why the triology was so successful, the western was reinvented and the legend of the gunfighter was put up to a different level.

And this viewer interaction was what Eastwood used to great effect with High Plains Drifter, however, he took it a stage further and made the audience enter nthe movie in a way unseen before. He made us think about the characters and make our own opinions about them, never more so than with his main character, the stranger, it was as though you were a person living in the town of Lago and like the townsfolk, you knew nothing about the stranger who came to the town other than what you saw.

This movie makes you ask the same questions you would, if you were there at the time, questions that have no obvious answers and unlike other movies of this type where you given some element of the characters history or elements of their past, in this movie, you know absolutely nothing about the stranger other than what you see, even his name is unknown so there is no element of his reputaion to deal with, as in John Wayne movies for example, or his real reason for being there and this makes the story very, very real and one of the best westerns ever made.

The movie opens with a scene on a desert where through the heat haze, a ghost like character suddenly appears in the distance and then comes into view. The music score was also very haunting and gave the impression that maybe this was a ghost coming out of the desert.

He rides into the town with his horse at a slow walk, taking in the town and people. Again this is the classic fearless gunfighter stance, showing no fear and moving as though he already owns the town. His only reaction is to the sound of a whip being cracked and at this he snaps his head around and looks at the man who made it, he then walks his horse on to the saloon. This is his only reaction and you get the impression that he has utter contempt for the town and its people.

The scene in the Saloon where the Drifter is challanged by three " gunfighters " to protect the town gives us our first glimse of his character. He is standing at the end of the bar with one gunfighter to his left and the other two facing him. Rather than pull his gun out and shoot them, something he could easily do as they are nor expecting him to do that, he just reaches quickly for a bottle of Whiskey standing on the bar. The speed that he reaches for the bottle tells everyone, including the three would be gunfighters that he could easily have killed them instead, he decides not to, you dont understand the reason and this makes you look at him in more detail ( exacly as you would if you were a resident of the town )

We also get a glimps of his dark side as he speaks to the leader of the gunfighters. Before he reached for the bottle the leader of the gunmen had told him that purhaps life was a bit to fast for strangers in Lago and thinking that with three of them, the stranger would back down and leave, he sneared as he looked at the stranger, however, having reached for the bottle, as though he was drawing his gun, the stranger tells the leader, " I am faster than you will ever live to be. " Very powerful stuff as at that instant, you see that the leader realises this also.

We then see some gun play as the stranger goes over to the Barbers for a shave and is followed by the three gunfighters. He promptly shoots them and then we see another side to his character. When he had entered the barbershop, he had taken his gun belt off and put a fake wooden pistol grip in the holster so that it looked like his gun was in it, we didnt see him do this of course but it becomes evident slightly later.

He had used deception to defeat his enemies and you just knew when you saw him put his real gun back in the holster after the shooting, this was a trick he had used many times before, therefore he was human and also had a weakness, why use deception when you are that good with a gun? This scene and his need to do this were never explained in the movie and again add to its mystique.

His character then changed tack again later when he is hassled by a women in the street who is obviously after a sexual encounter. After exchanging insults and some comic interaction which, he drags her off into a barn and " rapes " her, again this shows us the darker side to his charater and from that moment it comes out to the full.

Where the film becomes very magical is when the towns people decide to offer him anything he wants to protect them and he accepts. The look on the various characters faces as he walkes from shop to shop taking their products is worth a million dollars just to see. Every person in the village has to give him something or agree to him in someway and you can see in their faces just how terrible and horrible it is for each of them. They would sooner face death than give an Indian a blanket or give a child a sweet, what does this tell us about human nature?

So, this is a very psychological film then and it deals with all the obvious and some equally unusual human failings and behavioural traites and and send us clear messages about how these town people got into this mess in the first place. Fear, but from what?

The psychological aspects of the movie are even more relevant as it emerges that the town is hiding a secret, They had, had a Town Marshall who discovered a mine that brought the wealth to the town was on government land and therefore illegal.

Being the law, he had no choice but to report it and to stop him the town employed three killers to murder him. Being very sadistic they whipped him to death in the street and this was the secret they were dealing as although none of the people had tried to help the Marshall, they all hated themselves for what they had done and for not helping him. It was a dark secret within a darker secret, that which exists within each of them.

To make matters worse, they had then set up the three killers they had hired to kill the Marshall and had them sent to prision for three years and this is where the various apsects of the story all join together as the stranger is hired to protect the town against the three killers who now, having been released from prison, are heading for them to exact their bloody revenge.

I dont intend to tell any more of the story as you will have to see it for yourself but I definitely and highly recommend this movie as a study in character development like no other movie before or after it, except for The 13th Warrior, staring Antonio Bandares, which is equally as good in respect. This is an exceptionally good film.

When the action is all over and the stranger is riding off into the distance, he stops at the grave yard where the town runt is carving the name of the dead Marshall on a head stone, when asked his name, the stranger replies that he already knows who he is and then we get a shot of the carved grave stone.

So who was the stranger?.......certainly not the ghost of Marshall Duncan, was he perhaps his brother or was he just an opportunist who came to the town and milked the situation?

No it was evident that he had come to the town for a reason and the way he killed the three killers at the end of the film showed that he was extracting some kind of personal revenge.

There are many clues to his true identity throughout the film but thats all they are clues, there is no definitive statement made as to who he is and this makes the film even better, because you will walk away asking yourself who he really was. Excellent.

So if you want to see a special movie that deals with an accepted format in a very unique and different way and takes you on a journey into the dark side of human nature from all angles, you HAVE to see this movie.

The wide screen format does add a depth to the film that was only ever achiveable in the cinema but you do need a large screened TV to view it properly, however is is such a good movie that I would even watch it in B & W if I had to.

The people I envy are those who have never seen this film before, why?...... because they get to see it for the first time and that is something I can never do again......it really is that good.