Rent Ride the High Country (1962)

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!

The tame bunch - Ride the High Country review by HW

You can see the themes of Peckinpah’s later work beginning in this early western, his second film. Both Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott play their last western roles as ageing partners going on one last job: to protect a payroll of miners’ gold. But Scott’s character has more personal plans for all that bullion, adding tension to the plot. 

This almost feels like a gentler prototype of Peckinpah’s classic western epic about ageing gunmen, ‘The Wild Bunch’. This film becomes more of a romantic drama than an action film, when the two old partners and their younger, hot-headed companion become entangled with a young woman named Elsa: escaping from her religiously overbearing father to marry a miner at the camp the men are riding for; a scheme the younger man is not so keen on. Arguably Elsa is the strongest female character in all of Peckinpah’s male-driven films, even if she makes some poor decisions. If romantic complications aren’t your thing, there’s still some spectacular Californian scenery and a couple of thrilling shootouts at the end. They may not be as gruesomely exhilarating as the director’s later bloodbaths but they still have his trademark poetic edge. 

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.