High Plains Drifter
(1973)
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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 three gunmen just out of jail. The Stranger then paints the entire town bright red, renames it "Hell," and supplies Divine retribution in a fiery climax. |
Radio Times
Sex, sadism and the supernatural are loosely bundled in Clint Eastwood's stylishly self-conscious western: man-with-no-name satire or fable of mystic revenge, take your pick. Eastwood looms out of the desert, a mirage of retribution on a town's inhabitants who stood by while their honest sheriff was whipped to death. Eastwood seems, not altogether successfully, to be paying off debts to his former mentor, Sergio Leone — gratitude he can only express obliquely via the occult references in this distinctive variation on the spaghetti western genre.
Halliwell's Film Guide
Semi-supernatural, mystical revenge Western with an overplus of violence. Very watchable, but irritating.