pale rider (1985)

it amazes me just how much variation clint eastwood brought to the western genre. from the days of "rawhide", through the european revisionist time of the dollars trilogy (wherein he learnt his craft), the late 70's revisionist period he kickstarted with "the outlaw josey wales" and the 90's post-modern of "unforgiven", he has continually managed to update what is considered by many to be an overly familiar genre. "pale rider" fell between "the outlaw josey wales" and "unforgiven", with eastwood starring as a mysterious preacher with a mysterious past.

as is to be expected with the later work of eastwood, we are given the topics of fidelity and authoritarian abuse to deal with. the anti-corporate message underlying the plight of the gold miners is clearly a reaction to the politics and business ethics pf the 1980's.

joe kidd (1972)

fairly average mid-career eastwood, ably directed by john sturges. while the film is plenty entertaining, its hardly revolutionary cinema.

the outlaw josey wales (1976)

clint eastwood's fifth film as a director is perhaps his most remarkable. "the outlaw josey wales" is simply an utter joy of a film, turning the western and revenge genre's on their respective heads and pushing the boundaries of hollywood drama.

everybody knows the story of how "the outlaw josey wales" is an analogy for the war in vietnam, so i wont explore that concept here. i like looking at the film as a predecessor to the modern vogue of taking a hero and emphasising the concept that the hero in question is out of their time. this is where any similiarities bear to real conflict, be it vietnam, iraq or the battle of endor, and their heroes (read victims) are strongest.

the modern western, in the shape of "the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford" (2007) and "there will be blood" (2007) take a lot of inspiration from eastwood's film, in fact its probably not an overstatement to suggest that "the outlaw josey wales" paved the way for the aforementioned films, as well as countless others (not forgetting eastwood's own "unforgiven").

unforgiven (1992)

clint eastwood's most successful film, and indeed one of the most successful films of all time (critically at least) is one that i hadnt personally revisited for almost ten years. im a big fan of westerns, and have always considered john ford's 'the searchers' (1956) to be the piec de resistance example of the post-modern western, pre-dating unforgiven for the best part of forty years. in retrospect, rather than considering unforgiven to be 'the searchers' lesser, i should have considered it to be a post-modern take on a different genre of film. i was naive to think of a genre as well worn as the western to be as short sighted as just that - a genre, when i fact its much more.

clint eastwood plays william munny, a retired gunslinger tempted back into the field with the premise of one last job.