Pale Rider (1985)

Variety
"...The Western has returned in fine shape under the strong, knowing guidance of Clint Eastwood in PALE RIDER..." 05/08/1985

Spirituality and Practice 9 of 10
The independent miners barely scratching out a living in a canyon outside LaHood, California, are terrorized by the businessman (Richard Dysart), for whom the town is named. Hull Barret (Michael Moriarty) tries to stand up to this persecution, but his efforts are uninspiring. Megan (Sydney Penny), the 15-year-old daughter of Hull's fiancee Sarah (Carrie Snodgrees), prays for help...Although the mysterious stranger eventually reveals himself to be a gunslinger, his presence compels the main characters to come to terms with the meaing of love, justice, community, and the fight against Evil...Pale Rider is a Western with a religious undertow and as such is entirely appropriate to the 1980s These are the times when the public prefers to see good and evil defined in stark terms. Clint Eastwood conveys the sturdy self-control and cool confidence we like in our leaders. When LaHood realizes he cannot defeat the stranger with his own henchmen, he calls upon Stockburn (John Russell), a ruthless county marshal with six deputies. The outsider has an old score to settle with Stockburn, and the fight to the death turns out to be a Manichaean struggle. Clint Eastwood as both director and protagonist once again proves himself to be a master of stylized drama, depicting the powers of the flesh and the spirit. - Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
 
Chicago Sun-Times 10 of 10
Clint Eastwood has by now become an actor whose moods and silences are so well known that the slightest suggestion will do to convey an emotion. No actor is more aware of his own instruments, and Eastwood demonstrates that in "Pale Rider," a film he dominates so completely that only later do we realize how little we really saw of him...Instead of filling each scene with his own image and dialogue, Eastwood uses sleight of hand: We are shown his eyes, or a corner of his mouth, or his face in shadow, or his figure with strong light behind it. He has few words. The other characters in the movie project their emotions upon him...One of the subtlest things in the movie is the way it plays with the possibility that Eastwood's character may be a ghost, or at least something other than an ordinary mortal..."Pale Rider" is, over all, a considerble achievement, a classic Western of style and excitement. Many of the greatest Westerns grew out of a director's profound understanding of the screen presence of his actors; consider, for example, John Ford's films with John Wayne and Henry Fonda. In "Pale Rider," Clint Eastwood is the director, and having directed himself in nine previous films, he understands so well how he works on the screen that the movie has a resonance that probably was not even there in the screenplay. - Roger Ebert