Pale Rider (1985)

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Michael Moriarty, Carrie Snodgress, Chris Penn, Richard Kiel, John Russell, and Billy Drago
Grade: B+

I doubt anyone in the Old West was the size of Richard Kiel, but it was pretty cool to see Clint Eastwood fuck him up.

Summary

Outside of a small town in Lahood, California, a group of men attack and destroy a camp on the outskirts for no reason. They even kill Megan’s (Sydney Penny) dog. The men work for Coy Lahood (Richard Dysart), a miner trying to control the land in the entire area to search for gold. This small mountain town is the only one he can’t seem to take control of because all of the families that live there, that mine for gold on their own, have a legal claim to the land. Hull Barrett (Moriarty) is one of the leaders in this small camp and has been taking care of Sarah Wheeler (Snodgress) and her daughter Megan. Shortly after the destruction led by Lahood’s men, Megan holds a private doggie funeral and prays for a miracle to come save them.

Enter Clint Eastwood…

The mysterious Preacher (Eastwood) comes into town and manages to save Hull Barrett, who came into the main town to buy some supplies but got beaten down by Lahood’s men. The Preacher tries to leave but Hull, to show his gratitude, brings him to camp to host him and let him stay for the time being. Back at the camp, Megan reads off a bible passage from the Book of Revelation about Death riding in on a pale horse just as the Preacher (on his pale horse) strolls in with Hull. As the Preacher cleans up for dinner, we see numerous bullet holes in his back, alluding to a scarred past. Sarah complains about the Preacher to Hull and says she wants him out of the house. Just as they argue, the Preacher walks in and everyone stops, as he brandishes his clerical collar. Now, they all calm down because they know he’s a man of God. The bad guys alert Josh Lahood (Penn), the son of Coy, that they got their ass whipped by the Preacher and that’s why they were late for their shift to mine. Josh doesn’t seem too worried and grabs Club (Kiel) to come with him to send a message.

Back at camp, Hull tells Preacher about the whole mini-war they’ve been having with Lahood and how they’ve been basically terrorized by them, even though they have a legal right to the land. Preacher then offers to work while he’s there, so him and Hull try to bust this gigantic rock with sledgehammers because Hull’s been at it for quite some time, thinking there’s gold there. Josh and Club pull up and Josh tells Preacher to leave. To threaten him, he sends Club over to them. Club breaks the rock in half with one single hit from the sledgehammer. He goes to swing at the Preacher, but he hits Club with the sledgehammer in the face and groin first. Then, he helps Club back onto his horse and tells him to “ice it”. Josh considers shooting Preacher, but a stare from him makes him change his mind. Defeated for the moment, he leaves with Club. This inspires everyone in the camp, and they all come to help break the big rock into pieces.

Back from Sacramento, Coy Lahood finally comes to town and wants to hear about the progress of taking over Carbon Valley (the camp), but Josh and his buddy explain the presence of the Preacher. Coy gets mad, explaining that the spirit of the people in Carbon were broken before he left town. The presence of a preacher can change all of that and give them confidence. Coy makes it clear they need to take over Carbon, and they need to take out the Preacher. He says they can’t go too far with the Preacher though because making him a martyr would only give the people of Carbon more of a reason to rise up. As Megan falls in love with the Preacher and things start to look good for Hull, as he finds gold under the giant rock, they head to town. This is where Lahood’s men bring the Preacher into their office, peacefully. They give Preacher the offer of a $1,000 per claim if the miners leave Carbon within 24 hours, or they are at risk of Lahood bringing in a corrupt marshal named Stockburn (Russell) and his six deputies (one of which includes Billy Drago). The Preacher goes back and tells the camp of the offer, but Hull convinces the group to go to war because this land is the reason they came here. Plus, they have all settled with their families here.

Now, a battle looks to be on the horizon and these little miners don’t realize the trouble they have gotten themselves into. The thing is, the Preacher does.

My Thoughts:

Pale Rider is interesting in that its story that follows exactly the same trajectory of any western ever, but it’s still pretty good.

Clint Eastwood plays a preacher that never explains his backstory, and as I sit days later after watching it, I’m starting to think he wasn’t a preacher at all. I can buy that this mysterious Preacher is an action hero that can kick major ass and has an incredible talent with a gun, but it’s the other stuff that makes me question him. Besides saying one prayer before eating dinner (a surprisingly short pray I might add), he does nothing that would resemble the life of a preacher. There’s no scene where he says a prayer before bedtime, or even says anything eloquent or holy-like to Hull’s militia before they decide to wage war. I’m not saying we have to constantly see him praying, but there was nothing holy about him other than the clerical collar he wore. At the very least, he could’ve said an important prayer before the final battle. After all, he goes about it alone. Don’t you think he would pray for a little extra protection or carry a cross or something?

I will say that it is admirable he decided to take on the bad guys by himself, as his presence in Hull’s camp has led to this. That did feel Christian-like. It seemed like he didn’t mind sacrificing himself to help those that helped him. As holy as you can interpret his fighting and killing however, it still makes him a bit of an antihero rather than a straight hero. Yes, he doesn’t kill first, EVER. This is the not-so-subtle detail to make the ruthlessness of killing okay and it works. Even when he has the bad guys right in front him, he waits for them to fire first just so he can use this as his cue to kill without consequence and take out everyone in the area. Technically, it’s heroic. On the flip side, he fucks Hull’s wife after she implies she’d be down, even though she has decided at that point to marry Hull. What the fuck did Hull do to deserve that? He brought you in man! This is how you repay him? This unnecessary scene made me hate Sarah and question everything about the Preacher all in one! Thankfully, the Preacher turned down Hull’s underage daughter from earlier (for obvious reasons) but without a moment’s notice, he decides it’s okay to fuck his wife? I’m confused. What are we trying to say about the Preacher here? What did this accomplish?

I understand it’s the “wild west”, but he’s still a preacher, right? If you wanted to go through with scenes like this one, does it really make sense for the main character to be a preacher? Why didn’t they just make his character a regular, nameless gunfighter that rides in on a pale horse? Then, all of the actions stemming from Eastwood’s character would’ve at least made sense.

It’s just that on top of everything, we never hear or are told anything about his backstory. We just see bullet holes in his back in one scene. This can mean anything about the character and what he was involved in previously. All we get are some vague responses by Stockburn later, where he just reaffirms our initial thought that the Preacher knows his way around a gun. Yeah, obviously dipshit! Additionally, they don’t even explain how they know each other, why they are at odds, or anything about their situation. There’s this and the horrible axe handle fighting scene where the Preacher saves Hull. He beats up the bad guys in a comically slow fight scene, and they all fight him one-on-one. This group of guys just beat the hell out of Hull as a group right before this, so the Preacher didn’t stand a chance. Why didn’t they attack the Preacher in the same exact way? Why did they take turns watching each other get their ass kicked? When they actually use the axe handles, the sequence was choreographed so horribly, it looked like a couple of kids at Wal-Mart fake sword fighting with lightsabers in the toy aisle.

And yet, Pale Rider is still pretty solid. What the hell?

Clint Eastwood never gets old as the secretive gunfighter, and him randomly walking into a town to save it is always entertaining to watch. Michael Moriarty is a good sympathetic lead, and he becomes even more likable after you realize how much he helps this mother-daughter combo that doesn’t deserve him. John Russell is only in the film for a little bit, but he makes his presence known as Stockburn. He just looks intimidating. He looks like the perfect adversary to our hero in the clerical collar and that’s when business picks up. Chris Penn has a very slappable face. He was a solid choice as one of the other antagonists, though I felt like his role should’ve been a bit bigger towards the end. The action is very good, and the locations used are simple, yet very well done. It really sells you on the western feel. I also like the Preacher being compared to Death, as Megan reads it in the Bible. It felt a little cheesy how they present it at first but afterwards, it really puts into perspective the person they have involved themselves with and how they are about to see violence like they’ve never seen it before.

Is the message they’re trying to get across that sometimes you must fight evil with violence? If so, Pale Rider is the perfect representation of that philosophy.

It’s got some narrative mistakes and more questions than answers, but with the always cool Clint Eastwood in tow, great direction and editing, and a fantastic finale, Pale Rider is able to ride higher than my critique may initially suggest.