clint

Clint Eastwood. Midnight.

I should have gone to bed, but those spaghetti westerns that Eastwood are classics in a disturbing way, and I was hooked.

I had not seen this one, so I sat here and watched until pretty late – or early!

Clint is a bounty hunter that often leaves a room full of dead men, and does it with remarkable speed. He unwillingly teams with an equally principled bounty hunter against a bunch of bank robbers.

We did not get TV here in Idaho until the mid 50's and then the shows were trucked in and shown. The news was a day or two late.

There were a lot of westerns, cheap, predictable, but with a certain level of morality.

It was easy to tell who was who. The good guys were handsomer, taller, stood straighter and had prettier girl friends or wives. And they all wore white hats (Ok the movies were in black and white, so maybe they weren't really white).

Clint is a really bad guy who causes a lot more problems than he solves, but he does it in such a “manly” way. The bank robbers are all bad, of course, but little worry is placed on the bystanders.

It is this moral ambiguity that makes the movie both intriguing and frightening.

In so many ways this seems to reflect our world, and maybe mine too.