Ride the High Country by Sam Peckinpah is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and this time I agree with them, there have been a few accidents in the past few weeks, when some features seemed unworthy – nevertheless, you find thousands of notes on films from the NYT 1,000 and other web pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

Ride the High Country by Sam Peckinpah is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and this time I agree with them, there have been a few accidents in the past few weeks, when some features seemed unworthy – nevertheless, you find thousands of notes on films from the NYT 1,000 and other web pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

 

8 out of 10

 

Sam Peckinpah https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-ballad-of-cable-hogue.html was a magnificent director, The Ballad of Cable Hogue is excellent, but I think The Wild Bunch is the best-known masterpiece, I must say I had not heard of Ride The High Country, but it is about as good as Red River, or other classics

 

Joel McCrea is impressive as Steve Judd, one of the two, or maybe we can talk of three or four leading characters, and I must have seen him elsewhere, but he was relatively unfamiliar, just like the rest of the cast, with one exception, in the camp of the villains https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/01/note-on-true-grit.html

In some ways, it reminded me of True Grit, even if the only connections might be that these are both westerns, and they have a female rider somehow attached to the men riders, and it is against their will, to some extent, the circumstances are however quite different, one wants revenge, the other the opposite: love

 

Steve Judd rides into this small town and will be paid to get some gold from the miners working in the mountains back to ‘civilization’, given the enormous some, twenty thousand, which would be many millions today, he would need help, and thus he talks to his former partner Gil Westrum aka very good Randolph Scott

Unforgiven https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/09/unforgiven-by-david-webb-peoples-my.html is a golden standard, and Ride The High Country is not at that level, but then few motion pictures are – Gil Westrum had a history with Steve Judd, but in the meantime, he is close to a younger man, Heck Longtree…

 

Gil and Heck talk about taking the gold for themselves, pretending they will cooperate with Steve Judd, but only waiting for the best opportunity to steal the bag and run off, there are twists in the story, as they ride towards the miners, they stop at the place of this fundamentalist man, devoted to the Bible, but in a rather exaggerated way

The bigot has a daughter, Elsa Knudsen played by superb Mariette Hartley, and she brings to mind The Assassination of Jesse James by The Coward Robert Ford https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-assassination-of-jesse-james-by.html where a scene stuck to mind

 

These were times when people lived in the wild, away from any soul, and surely the intensity of emotions, feelings was high – Elsa wants to get away from her restrictive parent (her mother had died) and marry a miner, so she runs away from home to join the riders, who don’t want her with them, but have no choice

Indeed, young Heck has some plans of his own, although he has to accompany the woman to the family of her would be groom, they prove to be a Wild Bunch https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/01/note-on-wild-bunch.html and thus a good, traditional gun fight ensues, they have to fight for the honor and respectability of the heroine

 

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