Pale Rider 4K 1985 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

Northern California. Summer 1850. The boss of a gold mining company suggests that the independent prospectors leave voluntarily or they will be thrown out by force. The intimidated men have no choice. But one day a stranger arrives at their camp, the prospectors call him "The Preacher." He becomes the boss's rider of vengeance, and hell follows him.

Review 4K Movie

Thirteen years after Rider of the High Plains, seven before Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood buried the ideology of the classic western in the character of Rider Pale. Together, they are a trilogy. With a refrain reassessment of the canons of the genre, with a refrain demythologized hero, with a refrain theme of ubiquitous evil and defeated virtue. It took twenty years for the director to turn an infernal avenger, doing ultimate justice amidst the infernal flames of a fiery red expanse, into a pathetic man named William Munny, avenging himself out of weakness of spirit and circumstance. But in 1985, Eastwood's character is still far from a blatant landing of the image and final debunking. The Pale Rider is still a superhuman without a name, free in methods and actions to achieve the goal. The target, however, is second half 19th century tycoon Coy LaHood with bastard son Josh and sadistic Sheriff Stockburn. Hydraulic drilling drains a canyon, legally owned by the settler colony, on a gold mine. But, scornfully referred to as Lahood's gang, the “panhandlers” are unwilling to leave their land. A wanderer on a white horse will help them to unite against the enemy.

In the script Buttler - Shrike is not difficult to catch inherited motifs from “The Tramp of the High Plains”. A lonely place where there is no law. An unknown man with no name - either a man or a ghost. And if he is a ghost, he is either from God or from the devil. In the1972 version the hero has a scar on his neck, here - stitched with bullet wounds on his back. But if in the earlier movie the apocalyptic nature of what is happening was hinted at, here the young maiden reads in direct text: “...and there appeared a pale horse, and on it a rider whose name was Death”. And outside the window there appears a spooked guest whom everyone mistakes for a murderer, and he has the linen collar of a preacher. When Josh LaHood advises the stranger to get the hell out, he gets a definitive answer: “there are a lot of sinners in these parts and I can't leave without doing my job”. There is a theme of hell in both movies, but there it's fire, here it's water. The director has become wiser, less impulsive. Now the world is not divided into good and bad. The characters on both sides of the barricades are, by and large, indifferent to each other. Just a conflict of interest.

The director evolves from pure genre allegory covered by formal characterizations to historical material framed in the binding of allegory. This makes the neo-western more optimistic and lighter, as behind the ideological facades of the figures behind the events there are ambiguous characters.

The crowning issue is the clash with Stockburn's Seven, which is, of course, an irony for the legendary “Magnificent Seven” - Dad's movie, to which Eastwood himself never had anything to do. His seven are soulless killers, capable of shooting a drunk at point-blank range. And their leader is not a noble hero with a bald Yul Brynner, but a cowardly old man. The elimination of the fancy team of killers is built by a first-class ballet with quotations to a similar action in Sturgess's classic. One must part with the past as beautifully as Clint Eastwood does. By textbook quotation. By textbook innovation.