High Plains Drifter

Clear predecessor of his masterpiece Without forgiveness.

Clint Eastwood stars and directs in this shameless Leone homage from the early '70s. Eastwood's unnamed horse-mounted strangers have never been the friendliest characters in the west, but in this instance he takes things to a whole new level. He's quick with guns of several varieties, mowing down three rowdy bar patrons and raping a bystander in the film's uncomfortable opening scene, then settling in to take the surviving villagers for all they're worth when he's hired for protection. As it turns out, the village has a few dirty secrets of its own, and its leaders soon resort to a wide variety of veiled threats and bumbling backstabs to keep them quiet. That leaves absolutely no one in the clear as a moral compass, even the twisted preacher, and the film soon settles in to spinning lazy circles like a rudderless ship. Misogynistic, mean-spirited and narrow, it's not a whole lot of fun to watch beyond a few sporadic action shots and one or two well-placed puns. A far cry from the unspoken atmosphere, dense moral grey area and thick, palpable character of the Spaghetti Westerns that made Clint's name in the mid '60s.