Review of High Plains Drifter (1973) by Hunter D — 01 Jul 2008

Wow, Clint Eastwood really threw me a curveball on this one. What I thought was going to be an early Eastwood exercise in directing a genre film turned out to be something much, much more. What I got instead was a subtle supernatural revisionist western that was so morally complex it made my head spin, as I was thinking about it long after it was over.

Eastwood typically plays morally questionable characters, but this is the only film I've seen him in where I would describe his character as something very close to evil. The script is also written by Ernest Tidyman, who specializes in morally dubious protagonists.

He is, after all, the guy who created Popeye Doyle. The first few minutes of the movie feel like standard Eastwood fare, however before too long his seemingly cool character has show his true demonic colors, in that he has not only murdered three men, but raped a woman in broad daylight.

He doesn't play a character you can get behind, in fact, there is absolutely no one to root for in this film, but to insert someone who you could root for would diminish what this movie is doing. I don't want to say too much more since there are some twists in the plot that make it more interesting as it goes along, but this is a very interesting movie.

A word of warning though, the rape scene early on will probably scare off most modern audiences, as sexual violence in this movie is handled in a politically-incorrect way that's almost jaw-dropping.

However, I feel it only adds to the sinful nature of this movie, which is what Eastwood and Tidyman were clearly trying to get across, so I don't feel the need to criticize it too heavily.