Clint Eastwood (“High Plains Drifter”, “Dirty Harry”) directs and stars in this masterpiece Western. Despite the fact Eastwood been involved a lot in this film, we actually see very little of him during the picture. It stands tall among Westerns and joins the best ones such as “The Shootist” and Eastwood’s other film “Unforgiven”.

Clint Eastwood stars as an unnamed preacher, called and credited simply as ‘Preacher’, in “Pale Rider”. He appears mysteriously to help a small mining community battle against a greedy mining company owner, named Coy LaHood (Richard Dysart “The Thing”). He fights effortlessly like no other man could and leaves just as mysteriously as he arrived. Was he just on his way into town by coincidence? Or was he a gift from the heavens?

Eastwood’s character is simply fascinating and he leaves a real impression despite having less screen-time than most of Eastwood’s screen personas. He deals with a bad guy, who apparently hurt him a long time ago, in a way that will remind viewers of something earlier in the film and that’s genius. I really like the Hull Barrett character, who actually has more screen-time than Eastwood, I think. I like the villains, especially the one played by Richard Kiel (“Moonraker”, “Happy Gilmore”).

“Pale Rider” is a magnificent Western as it features everything you could want in a Western; there are gunfights, it’s gritty and of course there is humorous side to it and it’s the brilliant type of humour found in a lot of Eastwood’s films. Westerns were dead by the 80s but Eastwood proves good ones could still be made with this absolute gem. When people talk about the best Westerns, it is rare for this one to come up but it really is a wonderful film that I urge any Western fan to see.