Ride the High Country

RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY is one of the best movies I've seen all year. I'm having trouble figuring out where to begin writing about it.

Let's start with the location. California's Inyo National Forest is one of the most beautiful places in the world, particularly in the fall, when the aspen groves turn luminous yellow. This is the high country for which the film is named, and director Sam Peckinpah and DP Lucien Ballard shoot it so vividly, so marvelously, that I could
practically smell the sagebrush and feel the bite in the air.

Next, we'll roll into the story. The brief summary, "Old friends ride into the mountains to bring back a shipment of gold, but greed threatens to tear them apart," sounds so TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE that it led me to pass this film by. But there's so much more to this film than that summary, so much more unexpected grace and brutality, so much more humor and truth, that a summary does it scant justice. This is a film about who we are and who we want to be; it's the stuff of great drama, and it's realized greatly.

That realization can't happen without performances to give it life, and Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea anchor this movie by giving us men who've been heroes and scoundrels and who may have one or more switches still inside them. Their lives play out in a world that's moving on, and these men need to learn to move on with it, if they can. Mariette Hartley and Ron Starr represent the new generation, people with lots of mistakes still to make, and it's a pleasure to watch their characters get their feet under them.

This is a beautiful, exciting film. I didn't know what was going to happen next, but I came to care about these people and invest in their choices. I made time to see RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, and it was time well spent.