Review the High Country

If you believe the Leonard Maltin quote on the back of the 2006 DVD Ride the High Country (1962) is "considered by some to be Peckinpah's finest film," and being that this is the man who directed The Wild Bunch (1969) and Straw Dogs (1971) that is a doozy of a claim. I will let you down now, it is not better than the two movies I listed, but being shy of two movies which combine to attain a 20/20 is not an insult by any stretch of the imagination.

Thematically this movie seems more like it should be an adopted child of Peckinpah, surely not his by... blood. (Pun sort of intended). Arguably, that is a true case, being that this movie was not in fact written by Peckinpah as the other movies of his reviewed on this blog have been. Not to try and take away from N.B. Stone, Jr., the writer, but where as TWB and SD circumvent convention and turn stereotypes and formulas on their heads, with TWB changing westerns (and cinema) forever... this movie seems to play more in the conventional sense of both westerns and buddy films. That being said, the movie does succeed in being funnier than the other two combined matching sly zingers with great interactive dialogue the script is stronger than most, but weaker than some.

The storyline is quite straightforward, a few men, trying to make a buck, set out to gold mine to try and bring back some treasure for their employers, inventive yes, but regrettably the men are typical cowboys. Both are aging lawmen with eyes on that final ride into the sunset, but of course there's one more mission they've got to complete before they can meet history on an amber horizon. And as such, one could plug in any cowboy actor of the early sixties (i.e. John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart) and the movie would have progressed the same way, not a bad thing, but not a great thing.

Next is the direction, which is another place where I felt let down by the film again. The Wild Bunch is a brutal western, parched Mexican landscapes matched with vicious men made it feel exciting and new, on par with such classics as The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966) when it comes to an unforgiving west, but this movie in everything from the sprawling vistas to the shots of the characters whilst conversing is just so typical of ever other western at the time.

Although I did say they could be filled by most any veteran western actor, Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott are quite good as the two aging gun men, but there's nothing really done here acting wise that hasn't been done with the character type better else where.

Much of this movie boils down to standard western fare, but luckily there are enough inventional plot devices to make this movie more than an AT LEAST WATCH and into the realm of the LIKE.

Dr. Brooklyn says: LIKE this movie (9/10)