High Plains Drifter

Name: High Plains Drifter
Genre: Mystery, Western
Released: August 22, 1973
Duration: 105 min
Rating: 69
Cast: Billy Curtis, Clint Eastwood, Geoffrey Lewis, Jack Ging, Marianna Hill

1973

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Generally favorable reviews based on 10 Critic Reviews

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7.8

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7.8	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 20 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

Universal Pictures | Release Date: August 22, 1973 | TV-14

Starring: Billy Curtis, Clint Eastwood, Geoffrey Lewis, Jack Ging, Marianna Hill, Mitch Ryan, Scott Walker, Stefan Gierasch, Ted Hartley, Verna Bloom

Summary: A gunfighting stranger comes to the small settlement of Lago and is hired to bring the townsfolk together in an attempt to hold off three outlaws who are on their way.

Director: Clint Eastwood

Genre(s): Mystery, Western

Rating: TV-14

Runtime: 105 min

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Critic Reviews

Staff (Not Credited)

Clint Eastwood is the ultimate thinking man’s cinematic killing machine. High Plains Drifter is his spooky, dark, and vicious version of the Sergio Leone Man With No Name Spaghetti Westerns he once starred in, and a moody existential meditation on gunplay, revenge and karma. Payback! Read full review

Noel Murray

What’s most notable is how Eastwood holds fast to the rebel spirit of the spaghetti Westerns and revisionist New Hollywood Westerns of the previous decade, but packages it in a film that’s slicker and more mainstream-friendly. Read full review

Empire Ian Nathan

Brutal story-line which is about as close to an explicit allegory as the western has ever come. Read full review

TV Guide Magazine Staff (Not Credited)

High Plains Drifter is a morality tale carved out of the harsh Western desert and directed with a panache that synthesized the styles of Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, two directors who had worked with Eastwood frequently. The result is one of the best Westerns of the 1970s. Read full review

Vincent Canby

Part ghost story, part revenge Western, more than a little silly, and often quite entertaining in a way that may make you wonder if you have lost your good sense. The violence of the film (including a couple of murders by bull-whipping) is continual and explicit. It exalts and delights in a kind of pitiless Old Testament wrath. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

There's a boldness, confident stylisation, and genuine weirdness to the movie that totally escaped other post-spaghetti American Westerns, with a real sense of exorcism running both through and beyond it. Read full review

Richard Schickel

As a director, Eastwood is not as good as he seems to think he is. As an actor, he is probably better than he allows himself to be. Meanwhile, the best you can say for High Plains Drifter is that the title is a low pun. Rarely are humble westerns permitted to drift around on such a highfalutin plane. That, however, is small comfort as this cold, gory and overthought movie unfolds. Read full review

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Robwinz

Jun 28, 2020

The scene where Clint Eastwood is about to get his clean shave is honestly cinema at it's best.