I hate guns in real life and honestly think they should be illegal...but when Clint Eastwood finally picks up a gun in this movie, reader, I cheered
Cinemas
A mysterious preacher protects a humble prospector village from a greedy mining company trying to encroach on their land.
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Cast & crew
5What people say
Feels like the Angel to High Plains Drifter’s Devil, mixing classic western sensibilities of a movie like Shane with spaghetti rough and tumble realism... coming out with a familiar no name drifter yarn, but, like High Plains Drifter, with an otherworldly element surrounding our pale horse riding man of few words revenant... and that’s tantalizing to someone like me—there’s moments in this dripping with foreboding musical cues that feel straight out of a horror film and the final 20 minutes unravels like a damn slasher movie.The direction is tight, extremely consistent, and god damn this movie is loaded with beautiful shots and breathtaking mountains—this picture looks wonderful. The cast is excellent and Eastwood falls into this role so perfectly—those shots of his ghostly preacher walking through town filmed from an outside the town placed camera peering through alleyways is a big mood, and the look of pure fear on the Marshall’s face when he meets eyes up close with the Angel of death seals the deal on just how well this movie navigates its foreboding otherworldly sense of dread atmosphere.Overshadowed by the monolithic Unforgiven, but this still feels like a classic to me.
the final shootout here is a tour-de-force on blocking, staging, use of light and shadow, clint in pure formalist mode, the western hero as the outsider who is able to enter into the mytho-poetic space and then subvert it -- the preacher here isn't so much a man of god as he is a man who knows that the difference between god and man is bridged via the work of art. a deceptively simple story, customary restraint, minimalism of expression and maximalism of gesture, the man-with-no-name is free precisely because he doesn't have one -- judged by what he does, not who he is.
Common questions
What is Pale Rider about?+
Pale Rider follows a mysterious preacher who arrives in a small mining town to protect the residents from the encroachment of a powerful and ruthless mining corporation.
Who directed Pale Rider?+
Clint Eastwood directed Pale Rider (1985), marking his return to the Western genre.
Is Pale Rider a sequel to High Plains Drifter?+
While it shares many thematic similarities and the mysterious drifter archetype, Pale Rider is a standalone film rather than a direct sequel.
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