High Plains Drifter review

 Number 652 on the top 1000 films of all time is Clint Eastwood's Western film 'High Plains Drifter.'

Clint Eastwood plays an unnamed lone gunslinger who becomes the unlikely saviour of a frontier mining town who are under threat from a trio of dangerous outlaws.

High Plains Drifter was definitely one of Eastwood's weaker Westerns and weaker films overall. It was a formulative, repetitive affair that followed the all-too familiar pattern of cowboy films: a mysterious stranger is drifting through a quiet sleepy town, when suddenly he turns into an unlikely hero. Throw in some equally unlikely love interests and lots of gun-shooting for good measure.

Clint Eastwood's unnamed character was little different to any other character he's played in any Western film or at all to be honest. He played similar characters in the Dollars Trilogy or The Outlaw Josey Wales, But in every film he basically plays a grumpy old man. This was the case here.

Yet he wasn't the only strange casting choice. None of the cast were particularly memorable especially Geoffrey Lewis, Dan Vadis and Anthony James who played the outlaws without any nuance or charisma. They were your daily villains. The female characters were pretty vapid too.

I could see Eastwood attempting to distinguish this film from its predecessors by leaning into a supernatural element. Was the mysterious gunslinger actually a ghost wreaking rightful vengeance? This was largely left up to the reader so who knows the truth?

But what is true is that this was definitely one of Eastwood's worse films.

The Town review

 Number 729 on the top 1000 films of all time is Ben Affleck's crime-drama 'The Town.'

As well as directing, Ben Affleck stars as Douglas "Doug" Macray, a bank-robber who is looking to go straight. After his latest heist goes wrong, where his crew Jeremy "Jem" Coughlin (Jeremy Renner,) Albert "Gloansy" Macgloan (Slaine) and Desmond "Dez" Elden (Owen Burke) take bank manager Clare Keesey (Rebecca Hall) hostage before releasing her later, Doug begins keeping track of her. The two eventually fall in love. But for Doug to escape the life completely, he has to do one last job as ordered by local crime boss Fergus "Fergie" Colm (Pete Poselthwaite.)

What followed was a largely generic and banal action-thriller spearheaded by a largely wooden performance by Ben Affleck. Since starting this list, I've seen him in a few films, like Argo, which he also directed. And I would argue he is better as a director than an actor. It doesn't matter whether the role is a rough-round-the-edges hero or a bad boy turning good, he isn't very expressive. He just always seems to have a permanent scowl on his face. And there isn't a whole lot of emotion there. There are plenty of emotional scenes, or scenes that should be emotional, but Affleck couldn't really carry them off.  And since I wasn't invested in him as a character, I wasn't really invested in the storyline. Although he was nominated for Best Actor Bafta for his role in Argo, so what do I know? 

Affleck's lack of chemistry with Rebecca Hall didn't do much to help things either. Also a brief note on Rebecca Hall's accent. What was up with that? She's English, but at times it sounded like she was switching back and forth between English and Bostonian.

Much more convincing was Jeremy Renner. He plays Doug's childhood best friend and fellow bank-robber Jem Coughlin. Unlike his friend, he has no desires of leaving the life behind which sets up some nice conflict between the two. Renner was far more charismatic to watch and his storyline was more compelling. And it's a shame Poselthwaite was so under-used. He's a great actor so he should have had a far greater screen-presence. 

This wasn't a film I enjoyed very much if you didn't already guess. Sure it was watchable enough, but Affleck's wooden performance stopped it from achieving any true greatness in my eyes.