Clint Eastwood’s record-breaking Western that’s available to stream

This 2025 marks 40 years of one of the best westerns in Clint Eastwood and also one of the most forgotten. It’s about ‘The pale rider‘ (‘Pale Rider’), a film released in 1985 produced, directed and starring the famous actor and filmmaker in the role of Preachera mysterious man who arrives in a Wild West town where a mining magnate terrorizes local families. A great success for Eastwood that achieved a box office of 41 million dollars for a budget of just 7 millionbeing the highest grossing western of its decade.

‘The Pale Horseman’, one of Clint Eastwood’s great westerns

The merit of the Hollywood legend was even greater if we take into account that the western was going through its worst period since the failure five years before ‘Heaven’s Gate‘, being the second commercial film with a Far West theme released during the 80s and the only western that Eastwood filmed during that decade. On the other hand, critics were delighted with ‘The Pale Rider’, since it achieved great ratings and praise even by the most skeptical critics.

own Roger Ebertone of the most famous critics of all time – and also one of the harshest – did not hesitate to embrace Eastwood’s film after giving it the maximum score of four stars: “’Pale Rider’ is, in short, a considerable achievement, a classic western full of style and emotion“wrote Ebert. Forty years later, the film boasts a spectacular 94% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and a 83% rating from the public with more than 25,000 reviews.

The Rotten Tomatoes consensus is clear and praises the film, defining it as Eastwood’s return to the western genre: “Almost a decade after ‘The Outlaw’, Clint Eastwood returns as a director to the genre that made him famous with this elegant and spiritual western which is inspired by the classic ‘Shane’.”

The title of ‘The pale rider‘refers to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypseand Eastwood’s character represents the Deathwho arrives mounted on a white horse. In true western style, the Preacher resists the attacks and protects the town’s families, but when the local miners refuse to accept the magnate’s conditions, he sends his own forces with the intention of take down the Preacher and his allies.

‘The pale rider‘can be seen in Spain through platforms such as Prime Video, Apple TV+ or Movistar Plus+.

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