Hang Em High [Blu-ray]

 

 

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Hang'em High is one of my favorite westerns. Clint Eastwood is awsome in the role of Jed Cooper, a cowboy who is mistaken for a rustler and gets hanged. After being rescued by a sherriff and given a job as a lawman, Cooper seeks revenge on the 9 men who hung him.
Hang'em High is a good'ol western that's packed with great actors, like Alan Hale Jr. (Giligan's Island) Ed Begley. L.Q. Jones, Dennis Hopper, and in a brief role as a preacher, James MacArthur(Hawaii Five-O), and Bob Steele, in the role as a prison inmate. If you like westerns with Clint Eastwood, give Hang'em High a try.

Clint Eastwood had just completed perhaps the most successful trifecta in Hollywood western history with his "Man with No Name" trilogy. Those three films were marked by a melding of unforgettable Ennio Morricone music with the grubbiness that seemed to afflict the entire cast. This Eastwood was laconic and possessed of a dry sense of humor. In HANG 'EM HIGH, Eastwood is a preppier, more law abiding loner who has the great bad fortune to purchase rustled cattle from their abductors, and is promptly lynched by a gang of vigilantes who mean well, but in whose disregard for the niceities of law, the focus of the film is squarely placed. The west of this movie, unlike the west of his 'No Name' trilogy, may, in the words of Pat Hingle, the 'hanging judge' be so big that it dwarfs five states put together, yet that does not mean that it is bereft of any law and order. Eastwood, as Jed Cooper, survives the lynching, only to be offered a marshal's badge to bring to justice his lynchers. At the moment that Cooper puts on that badge, director Ted Post indicates that HANG 'EM HIGH is a morality movie disguised as a revenge oater. No one understands this better than Pat Hingle, as the hanging judge, who every day has to balance the expediency involved in hanging condemned criminals with the sobering thought that in his court he is 'the law, all the law.' Unlike Cooper, who has him to answer to, the judge has only his conscience. Because Eastwood presents himself as a transition figure between the ponchoed Man with no Name that he just was and the brute law and order icon that he would shortly morph into as Dirty Harry, he does not dominate each scene. Nor is there a dramatic vacuum when he blends into the background. Into his place swarms a host of a very capable supporting cast. Inger Stevens is particularly appealing as a troubled woman who has survived the physical trauma of rape only to find the emotional aftereffects as far more lingering. For those students of film who are acquainted with the details of Miss Stevens' troubled life that began in depression and ended in real-life suicide, her performance as the tormented victim takes on the hopeless overtones of art imitating life. Her ability to slowly blossom under the healing hand of Cooper is touching. Bruce Dern reprises a role that he has done countless times as both a big and small screen crazy. Dern is the leader of a gang composed of a pair of impressionably young brothers who, under other circumstances, might have turned out as decent citizens. In fact, the primary irony of HANG 'EM HIGH is that with the exception of Dern, who brags that he is 'truly as guilty as sin,' every other character is either good or a flawed version of good. Even Cooper's lynchers thought they were doing society a favor by skipping the cost of a trial. What emerges is a cinematic metaphor that clearly shows what happens even to good people who seek to do society a favor by circumventing the very rights of those charged with truly heinous crimes. The inner debate that Marshal Jed Cooper had to wage during his pursuit of the men who lynched him is shared by an audience who slowly comes to realize that the hanging judge, in all his exhortations about the necessary triumph of written law over vigilante order, was right all along.

Boring and predictable. A let-down after the trilogy and the High Plains Drifter.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Hung at high noon!
Clint Eastwood's movie, Hang 'em High, is very interesting and dramatic. The plot of this movie was predictable but that is quiet alright. Read more

Published on Jun 19 2004 by SK

5.0 out of 5 stars Strong Eastwood Follow-up To the Spaghetti Western Trilogy
I watched this one after seeing the classic spaghetti Eastwood films a few weeks back(A Fistfull Of Dollars,For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly). Read more

Published on Feb 24 2004 by Tuvan Uner

5.0 out of 5 stars Clint is the man..
Any great American can like a good western but if it is a Clint western thats even better..

Published on Jan 28 2004 by yessca

5.0 out of 5 stars A Clint classic!!!
This is one of Eastwood's best western's(not the hotel!!!), A classic!!! Great supporting cast!!! Two thumbs up!!! A+

Published on Jan 1 2004 by Jason P. Pumphrey

4.0 out of 5 stars Eastwood, home on the American range
After earning major stardom with Sergio Leone's spaghetti western trilogy, Clint Eastwood turned down both Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" and Carl Foreman's... Read more

Published on Dec 3 2003 by B. W. Fairbanks

3.0 out of 5 stars A solid western, Clint's first after the Leone films
Hang 'em High is a good, entertaining western featuring a good performance by Clint and superior work by fine character actors in the supporting cast, including Pat Hingle. Read more

Published on Sep 30 2003 by Jamie Cooper

5.0 out of 5 stars Clint Eastwood's first American Western.
Jed Cooper (played by Eastwood) is hung and left for dead by a mob. But he lives and, after being made a Deputy Marshal, goes out to hunt them down, all nine. Read more

Published on Mar 4 2003 by Michael Valdivielso

4.0 out of 5 stars Ghost Hunters
This review refers to the MGM DVD edition of "Hang Em High"....

So..What's our boy Clint up to in this great western? Read more

Published on Jan 15 2003 by L. Shirley

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Western!
Along with the Sergio Leone trilogy, this movie helped make the Clint Eastwood legend. It is the simplest story line (after love) - revenge. Read more

Published on Nov 30 2002 by Eric V. Moye

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining
Although not as stylized or polished as Josey Wales, High Plains Drifter, or The Leone trilogy, Hang 'em high still has a lot too offer. Read more

Published on Aug 27 2002 by Erik Pack

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