Rent Ride the High Country (1962)

For a Few Men Less - Ride the High Country review by griggs

Two western titans finally sharing a screen should be a gift, and when Ride the High Country remembers that, it delivers. Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea play old friends divided by integrity and self-interest but with a dynamic that is warm, wary, and perfectly matched.

The trouble is Peckinpah’s second act, which sidelines both leads while various men harass Mariette Hartley. It’s a tedious stretch that leans on cruelty where tension should be. Even this early in his career, he’s already reaching for the grim machismo he’d later refine in The Wild Bunch, though here it just feels cheap.

Once Scott and McCrea get back to what matters, everything clicks into place. The finale is genuinely beautiful: two ageing gunslingers framed against the high country while the West dies around them. It’s enough to make up for the sag in the middle — but you can’t help wishing the whole film had just been Scott and McCrea.

Top end western from the 1960s - Ride the High Country review by CD

This film thoroughly deserves its high ratings. Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott are both excellent in the lead roles and it's great to see James Drury, a star of the Virginian, in a main supporting role. The film is quite philosophical from the vantage point of the seasoned lawmen, but has plenty of action, moving at a steady pace across the 90 mins. The supporting cast in the miner's camp is very good and the finale is well structured although not sure why quite so many people broke cover to be shot!

A Minor Western Masterpiece - Ride the High Country review by GI

Sam Peckinpah's second feature film, and what a little gem it is too, shows the early hallmarks of his style and themes that emerged in his later classic films like The Wild Bunch (1969) and Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid (1973). It 's a story of a lost time and of men who struggle with the change desperately holding onto a lost code of honour. Joel McCrea plays ageing ex-lawman Steve Judd who accepts a job from a bank to bring miners' gold from a mountain camp back to town. Judd hires his old friend Gil (Randolph Scott) and young man Heck (Ron Starr) to assist him but Gil and Heck plan to steal the gold. On the way they become embroiled with a young woman fleeing her dominant father and her fiancé's violent family. A beautiful character based western with stunning cinematography from Lucien Ballard who shot many of Peckinpah's best work, here with the 'high country' of the Californian Sierra mountains as the setting. The film contains many of the contradictory themes that litter Peckinpah's work, honour, avarice, surviving in a changing world amongst others. A mini masterpiece of a film and if you at all still have a fondness for westerns then this is one I highly recommend.