If you have seen Eastwood’s Oscar winning ‘Unforgiven’, you will find ‘Pale Rider’ a couple of notches above it. This film lends a Biblical subtext to a Western plot and makes it more intriguing. And it shows that Eastwood is born to kick some rear, whether he is a cop or a cowboy or a preacher.
The film revolves around a small mining town where a group of miners are harassed by a land shark who wants to take over the entire valley for his mining industry. In strides an unknown cowboy, like the famous man-with-no-name, wearing a white collar but wielding guns and using his fists like a hit-man. His entry is marked by a young girl quoting from The Bible and he goes about helping the community, earning the nickname ‘Preacher’. The land shark hires a sheriff to kill him. Will he be successful is what the plot tries to uncover.
Clint Eastwood’s direction lends a lot of depth to this film. It has many references to the New Testament’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, of whom the rider of the pale horse is called Death. In addition to the basic plot, he also adds subtexts like the infatuation of a miner’s daughter and her single mother with the Preacher and how he balances his relationship with the miner, who wants to marry her. There is also a coming of age subtext, where the adolescent daughter, confused between lust and love, who is in search of strength in the midst of suppression and sees in the Preacher, a true man.
While Eastwood’s performance is quite predictable, the film is quite dark and intense with good performances from Michael Moriarty as the miner and Caroline Snodgress as the single mother. There are a lot of fists used in the action sequences in addition to the customary gunfights.
‘Pale Rider’ is a serious Western that will make you think. A good watch
