Pale Rider (1985, R)

Pale Rider is a haunting, unforgiving, and violent film that invokes several other of Clint Eastwood's previous westerns. I think it's fairly obvious that Pale Rider redemonstrates how a typical Eastwood western runs—only this time maybe in better fashion.

That said, Pale Rider is one of Eastwood's better, though not his best, westerns. It plays out in typical fashion of the the Spaghetti westerns from the 60s (a Fistful of Dollars, for a Few Dollars More, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly), combined with how Eastwood's later American westerns were (Hang em High, High Plains Drifter, the Outlaw Josey Wales), and it's not the first Eastwood western to have religious undertones to it.

Set in the Rocky Mountains in the American West, the film follows a group of gold mining families panning for gold, all of them hoping to strike it rich, but they are constantly harrassed by Coy LaHood (Richard Dysart), and his gang of thugs. As a matter of fact, the film opens with LaHood's men shooting up the miners camp, tearing down the tents and shooting down most of the animals. That's when, after a teenage girl named Meghan prays) that a mysterious preacher (Eastwood) arrives in town, and helps the miners fend of LaHood and even find a little gold. But when LaHood starts to really mean buisness and hires real guns behind a badge to get drive the miners out, Preacher dons a couple of revolvers, and sets into a motion a culminating gunbattle in the streets of the town.

Filmed beautifully in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho, Pale Rider definitely offers a very nice slice of western entertainment. Yet again, Eastwood proves that he's just as good behind the camera as he is on camera. Like most Eastwood westerns, it all culminates in a climatic, classic shootout. Like most Eastwood westerns, it's hard, gritty, tough and violent. Like most Eastwood westerns, it has mysterious, religious undertones that add to the suspense.

In many ways, you could consider Pale Rider to be a remake of the classic western film, Shane. I discussed above how Pale Rider was effective in bringing in together elements of Eastwood's spaghetti westerns and his later American ones. If you have watched Shane, then you will most likely find Pale Rider to be predictable. That's because the plot, the characters and the setting are so 'copied' off of Shane, so that it basically is a rerun of Shane, only that Pale Rider offers the elements of a good, traditional Eastwood western. 

                                                                  ****/5