Synopsis: They’d never forget theiday he drifted into town.

Clint Eastwood’s second film as director, High Plains Drifter returns the actor to his familiar scene of the Old West and his familiar role of “The Man With No Name.” Eastwood portrays a mysterious stranger who emerges out of the heat waves of the desert and rides into the guilt-ridden town of Lago. After committing three murders and one rape in the first 20 minutes, The Stranger is hired by the town to protect it from the three gunmen just out of jail. The Stranger then paints the town bright red, and renames it “Hell'” and supplies Devine retribution in a fiery climax.
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High Plains Drifter 7.75

This is one of the rare Eastwood films that I’d only seen once before. In fact, I had not owned a copy of it until just recently, despite being really eager to see it again (I had quite enjoyed the darkness of this drama when I first saw it! ).

As I’ve mentioned before, I sure love a good revenge story.

*minor spoiler alert below*

In ‘High Plains Drifter’ Eastwood plays an angel of retribution of sorts. It’s never explicitly made clear who he is and where he comes from, but it’s suggested that he is a dead man whose soul has returned to seek vengeance on the town that betrayed him and left him in an unmarked grave. It reminds me of Japanese ghost stories, in a way, but crossed with the traditional American western.

What’s puzzling to me is that no one in that town recognizes him, even though, for all intents and purposes, he appears to look quite the same as he did while he was alive; his physical manifestations aren’t that dissimilar. The fact that all the townsfolk are the same and that not much time has passed doesn’t explain how they could have forgotten him – unless he was only there for a short while. Perhaps, combined with their lack of empathy and their self-centeredness, it was possible to forget…

*minor spoiler alert above*

But, it i’sn’t established.

In fact, the script could have been more clever in revealing what had led to The Stranger’s appearance in Lago. We keep getting regular glimpses of what had happened, but it’s done in a repetitive way that is largely unsubtle and doesn’t contribute much mystery or suspense. As far as I’m concerned, they could have just shown us everything from the onset and have dispensed with these vignettes.

I wonder if it’s an editing or a script issue. Could it be a directorial choice?

After all, this was Clint Eastwood’s second film as director, and he was still learning the craft. He’s decent here, but hardly in top form – even the set-ups are sometimes uninspired. As far as I’m concerned, it took him many years before he really gave a polish to his films, eschewing depth for standard action fare in his early days.

It is notable, mind you, that his choice of material was very dark in the beginning – what with ‘Play Misty for Me’ and ‘High Plains Drifter’ being fairly troubling material. I’m not sure if he was trying to prove a point, or if it was an attempt at shaking off his reputation as an action man by directing himself in largely different vehicles. Or perhaps he’d always wanted to do this type of film, but couldn’t unless he did it himself?

While ‘Play Misty’ is one of the first stalker films that I can recall, and it predates ‘Fatal Attraction’ by more than 15 years, ‘HPD’ sullies the traditional white-hatted cowboy even more so than Sergio Leone ever did. The Stranger isn’t just an anti-hero, he’s downright villainous. Except that he’s also our protagonist, in that the people he’s out to take revenge on are even more soul-less than he is.

The fact is that The Stranger is one of the least palatable characters that Eastwood’s ever played.  He smokes, drinks, kills, rapes without any sign of a guilty conscience and is ruthless in all his dealings, deriving satisfaction from the trouble he’s causing in Lago. In his quest for revenge, he basically humiliates the whole town in various ways, taking advantage of their fear and inability to take charge. It might be to teach them a lesson, but it’s a hard lesson for them to learn.

The usual cast of Clint Eastwood character actors are featured here. Anyone who’s seen his ’70s films, will recognize half the faces, if not their names. Eastwood had a tendency to work with a close-knit group – which says a lot about how easy he was to work with, compared to his peers. But it may not always have served him well, in that they were not all the most capable (case-in-point, the acting wavers from so-so to decent – there were no award-winning performances here, that’s for sure ). I suspect that loyalty was (is?) more important to Eastwood than technical merit, for good or bad.

Despite its shortcomings, I quite like ‘High Plains Drifter’. Sure, it could use some touch-ups, and I wouldn’t even be adverse to a remake of this story (although, without Clint, why bother?), but I still wonder why ‘The Outlaw Josey Wales’ is oft-referred to as a classic, whereas this one is largely forgotten. It’s an imperfect film, granted, but it’s much more memorable.

Personally, I liked it enough to give it an 8.0. However, I think it would be more fair to give it an 7.75 (the quality of the film was a tad better than average, but only just so).