'Hang 'Em High' gets off to a great start, but after a set of fantastic opening titles, the movie quickly becomes 'Leone Lite.' Literal in its approach but rambling in structure, 'Hang 'Em High' begins with the premise that Clint Eastwood will go out and seek revenge on the men who nearly killed him. And, well, for the next hour and forty-five minutes or so, that's pretty exactly what you see him do. In between rounds of 'justice,' the film gets bogged down with preachy passages condemning the rigidity of capital punishment and a half-baked subplot/love interest that doesn't begin until the film is nearly over and then doesn't amount to much. It was cheaply made with obvious painted backdrops outside open doorways and noticeably redressed sets. Also, it was sloppily assembled look for the film equipment under the hangman's scaffold.
To compound things, the men Eastwood is out to get really aren't that bad. By and large, the posse that strung him up at the beginning did so only because they believed he was the man responsible for the killing of a well-respected rancher and his wife and a personal friend to most of the posse's members. With a few exceptions, the men were guilty of little more than overreacting and punishing the wrong person but doing so with honorable intentions. They should have been paid for this, but, frankly, I just never felt they deserved what they got.
To compound things, the men Eastwood is out to get really aren't that bad. By and large, the posse that strung him up at the beginning did so only because they believed he was the man responsible for the killing of a well-respected rancher and his wife and a personal friend to most of the posse's members. With a few exceptions, the men were guilty of little more than overreacting and punishing the wrong person but doing so with honorable intentions. They should have been paid for this, but, frankly, I just never felt they deserved what they got.
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