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Ric and I watched this last weekend. We've slowly but surely been watching classic westerns (I more than he) and I've been realizing that I tend to like them a lot. High Plains Drifter was always one I had heard about, and it was Eastwood, so I was in. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as great as I had hoped it would be.

The story begins as a stranger with no name (does Eastwood ever have proper names?) rides his horse into the small town of Lago. He stops in the local bar for a drink, where everyone eyes him severely, talks a little bit of disinterested smack, and goes to the barber, where a few men try to attack him while he's in the chair. Obviously, he destroys them. The opening shot and these first few scenes are actually very cool.

From then on out, the focus of the movie changes. Three infamous outlaws who once brutally killed a man in that town--and were subsequently arrested and held it against the townfolk--are going to be released from prison soon. The townspeople see the gun-wielding potential in the stranger and offer to let him have anything he wants in town, as long as he helps protect them. This is where the plot gets somewhat goofy, because pretty soon there's a midget Mayor, all the buildings in town are painted red and the city sign now says "HELL", and a big picnic is being organized to welcome the outlaws home. He also treats everyone in town like crap and destroys half their buildings in playing out his plan. These scenes are also interspersed with flashback sequences of a dark scene in which the three outlaws basically whip and beat a man to death. See where this is going?

How all of the stranger's plans really come together is beyond me. Most of it seems rather pointless, and the reasoning behind some of his decisions is never clear. If it's all basically intended to torture the town, then I guess it makes sense, but is still an odd way of going about things. The stranger, too, is hard to empathize with throughout the movie because of how callous he is, especially the way he takes advantage of a couple of women, one of them a married lady.

I think what the film lacks is enough character development to make the stranger's motives fully understandable as the first half to two-thirds of the story unfolds, and even then, some of his actions seem despicable enough that one can't necessarily root for him. And, (SPOILER) if all the townspeople watched this guy get killed, you'd think they'd remember him when he comes back to haunt their town.

High Plains Drifter has a lot of stylish scenes, Eastwood's usual, cool attitude, and a few funny moments, but it lagged a little bit and never fully fleshed out to its potential. Oh well.