Hang 'Em High proves to be one Western too many for Clint Eastwood. After the success of the Dollars trilogy he jumps back into the genre with a movie which thoroughly disappoints. This is a slow, dull, quite tedious film. Not much interesting happens. Honestly not much of anything happens. Drama and excitement are in desperately short supply. The big action sequences you expect from such a film never arrive. The characters are not compelling, the story is paper-thin and the supposed climax is totally anticlimactic. Very hard to find anything good to say about this one.
In this film Eastwood's character actually has a name. He's Jed Cooper and soon after we meet him Jed finds himself swinging from a tree with a rope around his neck. A posse, thinking him to be a cattle rustler and a murderer, hangs him. They do a rather lousy job of it. A federal Marshal shows up, cuts down the still very much alive Cooper and brings him before a judge. This judge likes to hang pretty much anyone brought before him but he realizes Cooper's innocence and actually makes Cooper a Marshal. And from there things go about as you would expect, Cooper hunting down the men who lynched him, seeking vengeance. Sounds like it could be interesting but it doesn't turn out that way. The fact the bad guys are such bumbling, bungling idiots doesn't help. Given another chance to kill Cooper they fail even more miserably than the first time. They really are quite pathetic. If you can't take the bad guys seriously it's near impossible for this type of movie to succeed. And that's the case here. The film's central conflict is a letdown. And there's nothing else to prop the film up. A tepid love story falls completely flat. The hanging scenes (and with this judge in town there are plenty of opportunities for hanging scenes) are interminable. Eastwood is reasonably decent in his role but no other performer really makes a mark. Some, most notably Ed Begley as the lead bad guy, miss the mark entirely. Getting through this film is really a chore. There's no suspense, the drama drains away all too quickly. This is not a good film. In fact it's quite bad. You might even call it ugly.
In this film Eastwood's character actually has a name. He's Jed Cooper and soon after we meet him Jed finds himself swinging from a tree with a rope around his neck. A posse, thinking him to be a cattle rustler and a murderer, hangs him. They do a rather lousy job of it. A federal Marshal shows up, cuts down the still very much alive Cooper and brings him before a judge. This judge likes to hang pretty much anyone brought before him but he realizes Cooper's innocence and actually makes Cooper a Marshal. And from there things go about as you would expect, Cooper hunting down the men who lynched him, seeking vengeance. Sounds like it could be interesting but it doesn't turn out that way. The fact the bad guys are such bumbling, bungling idiots doesn't help. Given another chance to kill Cooper they fail even more miserably than the first time. They really are quite pathetic. If you can't take the bad guys seriously it's near impossible for this type of movie to succeed. And that's the case here. The film's central conflict is a letdown. And there's nothing else to prop the film up. A tepid love story falls completely flat. The hanging scenes (and with this judge in town there are plenty of opportunities for hanging scenes) are interminable. Eastwood is reasonably decent in his role but no other performer really makes a mark. Some, most notably Ed Begley as the lead bad guy, miss the mark entirely. Getting through this film is really a chore. There's no suspense, the drama drains away all too quickly. This is not a good film. In fact it's quite bad. You might even call it ugly.