Surprisingly incoherent and boring

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

"Pale Rider" is a Western with such an aura, such an attitude and such a stance over the Western myth that it's almost a miracle it could flirt with self-consciousness while never sinning by it. Clint Eastwood might be the only director still capable of such miracles. The actor has always been a man of a few words, of stares that could speak more ominous statements than a Samuel L. Jackson's monologue. His ways of standing, looking, existing could exude more magnetism than the Magnificent Seven put together. But more than his natural blessings that made him a man women liked and men wanted to be like, Eastwood had an all-American attitude toward the frontier spirit. He who was made a star through Western (before Leone, there was 'Rawhide') he returned back the favor after the disastrous failure of "Heaven's Gate" seemed to have sealed the genre's fate. It's like Eastwood and Westerns form a natural cycle, they both define one another, as if there was a true predestination in his name being an anagram of Old West Action. Though "Pale Rider" isn't much about the Old West as it is about action, the film retells the story of George Stevens' "Shane" with miners replacing homesteaders and standing in the way of a powerful and influential industrialist named Coy LaHood (Richard Dysart) who believes he and progress make one. His attempt to buy 'tin pans' out and to threaten them through acts of intimidations almost destroys their spirit until a mysterious rider comes into the picture and prove that before being about action, Westerns are about 'states of mind'.I mentioned Eastwood's natural aura because it's integral to the story's believability. Alan Ladd was good at Shane but he wasn't exactly threatening, he had to prove his worth at gun, at fist-fight and through a few one-liners such as "I like it to be my idea". Eastwood doesn't even need himself, only a silhouette appearing and then vanishing before you notice it, a weak lighting that can only reveal his piercing eyes or just being mentioned in a conversation. When young Megan (Perry Sidney) buries her dog, killed by LaHood's men, she has a prayer where she begs the Lord for help, her "please" has that childish resonance that indicates how hopeless they are. Eastwood intercut it with his arrival, it's not played for subtlety but to establish his mystical charisma.The man, like Eastwood's seminal antihero, has no name, he is called the Preacher. He doesn't quote the Bible much but he saves the day in more than one occasion, without leaving mortal casualties... not yet anyway. He accepts to help the miners, but they didn't ask for help, just for him to stay as if his presence was healing their spirit already. But Eastwood counterbalances the sanctification with the idea of a pending doom. His entrance coincides with a 'Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse- recitation and he obviously fits the description of "Death". But as he said it himself: "God works in a mysterious way", you can't explain providence, but you just can tell that there's something providential about the man, even if he means Death.And in the same vein of intelligence, it also means that there's something 'evil' about LaHood even if he means Progress. He knows "blood is a big expense" and tries to get the Preacher out through bargain and only resorts to violence in extreme cases, but for all his malevolence, he's got a business to run, and his interactions with this son (a youngish and thin Chris Penn) and his men aren't those of an evil mastermind briefing his troops. There even comes a point where the Preacher starts to negotiate with LaHood, and submit his offer to the miners. Intelligently enough, the Western is able to deconstruct a few tropes for the sake of three-dimensional characterization.On a similar level, it also depicts Hull Barrett (Michael Moriarty) not as a Beta Male but as a decent human being, brave enough to defy LaHood's thugs, to support his family and to take care of Sarah, Megan's mother (Carrie Snodgress), even waiting that she makes up her mind to get married but as the Preacher said "it might be along wait". It might take longer as both daughter and mother are infatuated with the Preacher (can we blame them?). But while it's a sort of teen crush for Megan, for Sarah, it's like a nasty teasing from fate. She's been abandoned by a man she truly loved -as she tells Megan she's a child of love- and her feelings toward the Preacher are worryingly the same.Maybe there's the idea that some things or some people are too grand to stay, their appeal is eternal but they're not meant for the common people though there is nobility in being a simple, decent and hard-working human being. The Preacher incarnates an idea of the Old West, a few words, but action, spirit, courage and determination... and a few resurgences of the past here and there. The past is a lone rider throughout the story, it's the dog's death that trigger's Penny's desire for revenge, it's Sarah's past with men that forged her suspicion and made Hull her whipping boy, and there's something about the Preacher's past hinted through some wounds and lines of dialogues that takes its full meaning when his nemesis is brought up in town, Marshal Stockburn played by an equally intimidating John Russell.The hints about the past mystify the film and let it venture in the realms of fantasy but without getting too far from the Western narrative. Eastwood's directing is confident enough and allows him to get away with contrivances... what can't be explained isn't forced fantasy, but meaningful mystery. (Still, the greatest mystery of all is that it seems to have escaped everyone's attention that the film is a remake of "Shane", as there's no mention of "Shane" in Ebert's review or on Wikipedia.)

Just caught another Clint Eastwood film that I had never seen before, 1985's "Pale Rider." In this film, the most successful Western of the 1980s, as it turned out, Eastwood directs AND stars as a mysterious entity called only The Preacher. After a small group of gold prospectors is attacked by the thugs of a larger mining company in northern California, a 14-year-old girl in the group (pretty Sydney Penny) prays to God for assistance, after having had her dog shot dead by the goons. Seemingly in answer to her prayers, into the area rides the Eastwood character, who may or may not be a ghost seeking vengeance (at one point, we see that his back is covered by the scars of ancient bullet wounds, and the viewer is left to draw his or her own conclusions). The Preacher comes to the aid of one of the prospectors (Michael Moriarty) who is being beat up by the goons in the small nearby town, and later enjoys the hospitality of the prospectors, including Sydney's Mom, played by Carrie Snodgress. This, of course, does not sit well with mining exec Richard Dysart, who sends another of his goons (Richard "Jaws" Kiel) to intimidate the group, and who later gets even more serious by hiring a corrupt marshall (John Russell) and his seven "deputies" to do away with the tin panners and their Preacher friend. The film is more than a little in debt to the great '50s Western "Shane," one of MY all-time favorites, and many scenes echo that earlier Western fairly slavishly. The picture builds to a fairly exciting ending, with the Preacher taking on Russell and his similarly attired thugs (the badmen look very impressive in matched, tan-colored dusters) in a gun battle that reminds one not of "Shane," but rather "High Noon." In a satisfying denouement, the Preacher fills Russell with bullets that exit from his back, echoing the wounds that the Preacher himself once suffered (after having been shot in the back?). Visually, Clint's picture is fairly spectacular, having been filmed in both Idaho and northern California; the script is intelligent; and the players all uniformly fine. Clint is effortlessly cool in the film, and has himself said in interviews that he believed his character to be a straight-out ghost. All in all, a most impressive outing, and one that I was very glad to have finally caught up with....

Eastwood may have been the one to popularise the man with no name, but before he made this gruff remake, and before he shot to fame as the mysterious gunslinger, there was Alan Ladd in the eponymous Shane, who although has his name emblazoned all over, is more or less the same figure. The 1953 western is altogether a dirtier, enclosed affair, despite the state of an ageing, mid 50s Eastwood's beard. When Ladd rides off into the sunset at the close of the tale, his arm hangs limp by his side and the little boy has been shocked that the invincible figure has had his blood spilled. Here is the most noticeable change - Joey Starrett, the puppy dog that dogged Shane's every step and brazenly compared his gunslinging against his own father, replaced by a girl on the verge of womanhood, pretty enough that she thinks she has to fight with her mother for Eastwood. Modelled masculinity is replaced by puppy love then, although the ideal is the same. Eastwood lifts the story from its grimy origins and adds a supernatural flair, serving mostly his own character. He is not just a lonely drifter who wanders into town, but is directly summoned from the heavens by Megan, who prays for a miracle to lift Lahood's reign of terror. The film cites a figure of mythical proportions from the bible itself: "And I saw, and behold, a pale horse, and its rider's name was death, and hell followed him." The archetype lends to this aura; we get no backstory, no name, no explanation, only that he wears the preacher's dress but may not be so godly after all. Hints are scattered: the gunshot scars on his back that no ordinary man could have survived, and the corrupt sheriff's remarks on his now deceased nemesis. The preacher's ability to walk into a cafe and disappear into thin air in the final shootout further lends evidence towards this theory. But in doing so Eastwood gets muddled up in myth and displaces tension. Leone was a master of this, matching movement with music in slow, deliberate strokes. The soundtrack isn't so integral in this instance, and because Eastwood stresses the immaterial, there is nothing thrilling about the actions on screen. One particular sequence, in which a deputy stalks the outhouse, and is rudely interrupted by an errant hand and gun emerging from the trough, elicits silliness and giggles instead. The film seems sandwiched between its origins and the eventuality of the genre. The plot is almost directly copied from Shane, yet Eastwood himself is a weathered old relic of the past, grizzled and scarred and long past his prime, where the clipped dialogue was at optimum coolness. More key signs: the railroad, the most iconic symbol for the impending death of the west, and the machines that Lahood seek to replace hand and tool, great big metal constructs that blast water and dig up the earth to excavate gold. The rest of the residents also seem to be stuck in the wrong timeline. See the friendly giant Club, made ripe from goofy sidekick material, and the ever-hateable Chris Penn as Josh Lahood, with a face built like a high school bully. After Blazing Saddles, could his appearance be anything but ridiculous? Eastwood would have to wait a little bit longer until he fully looked the part, and fashioned Unforgiven, his masterpiece, and fittingly, his last western.

This is a good movie for a free afternoon, with some wisdom and interesting characters, but that has suffered the pass of time in his visuals and in the way the plot develops.The plot of "Pale Rider" is easy enough that anyone will understand it: some people live in a small settlement where they search for gold, while the bad guy and his henchmen want to force them out and try to scare them constantly. After their last attack to the settlement, where they injure some of the people, break everything they can and kill a dog, the young Megan, the owner of the poor animal, asks for help while burying the little fellow, and, voila, Clint Eastwood, appears. I say Clint Eastwood because we have here the hard-looking, tight-lipped, no-time-for-silliness portrayal that made him famous in his spaghetti-westerns. It may be "Preacher" but it's not so far away from his other portrayals of mysterious gunslingers who will not stop for anything till they finish their mission.Even if it is not very original, the movie is good. The actors are good and do a great job to go through some ambiguous moments (as when they have to decide if accepting an offer to leave the settlement), even if it is a story of bad, very bad, and good, but flawed, people. Clint Eastwood is as good as ever, bigger than life, expressing a lot without doing actually much. The best part is seeing the struggle of all the people that have to live in a hard world, without knowing what will come tomorrow and if there is a point in what they are doing. If you like westerns you will enjoy it, and if you like Clint, probably too.