Review of Pale Rider (1985) by Stacey C — 21 Apr 2008

Sky blurb added to their synpopsis the line "but what is this strangers motivation?". Quite a gnomic comment and probably goes to show that the current generation are divorced from the epic battles of the soul that accompany religious belief.

This movie deals with concepts almost alien now; the doctrine of forgiveness and redemption, divine judgement, the apocalyptic power of the book of revelations. On a modern superficial level I expect the Preacher is pretty hard to get a grip on.

What made this film enjoyable to my generation was a bit like what makes the da vinci code work (as a book). It is a jumblesale of ideas which the plot picks it's way through. On a theological level it is nonsense; a devout presbytarian rambling through a stream of consciousness diatribe on armageddon whilst whacked on peyote mushrooms makes more sense.

But all this works, exactly as the western should, to allow the hero to express all of his frontier toughness, his compassion and his man of the soil credentials, his hard drinking and womanising, his biblical sense of justice and self righteousness and a shedload of pistolwhoopin's, fast draws and dynamite in a down-in-one whisky sodden shotful.

Contrast this with recent 3:10 to Yuma where they have to spread the sum of these plot ambitions between two contrasting lead characters and both are diminished as a result. Future projects to revive the hollywood western need to bear in mind the words of Gil Scott Heron "the hero always rides in to save America at the last moment".

Singular. That's the beauty of it.