Ride the High Country

A good western always manages to please me, and Sam Peckinpah knew how to make one. He chose characters that were worth it, where the heroes are strong and the villains slimy, but certainly not one-dimensional. The fight for the woman is then made more interesting by the fact that she is not necessarily a beauty, yet they still want to win her over. (05/22/2017)

It lacks the dance macabre that would be typical of Peckinpah, but his disillusionment with the Wild West era and somewhat peculiar approach to female characters is already apparent. The film gets off to an unexpectedly slow start, but from the moment it arrives at the gold-mining colony it grabs you and doesn't let go. A minor blemish on the beauty was the hard-to-believe sudden change of Gil Westrum's temper into a man of honour at the very end, but otherwise no complaints. (08/19/2006)