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Alvarosinde (talk | contribs) m Replacement of "Tho his laconic sense of humor often drags out the pacing of the movie, Eastwood..." by "Though his laconic sense of humor often drags out the pacing of the movie, Eastwood..." |
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Universal released the R-rated ''High Plains Drifter'' in the United States in April 1973, and the film eventually grossed $15.7 million domestically,<ref name=mojo/> ultimately making it the sixth-highest grossing Western in [[North America]] in the decade of the 1970s and the [[1973 in film|20th highest-grossing film released in 1973]]. The film was well received by many critics, and rates 96% positive on [[Rotten Tomatoes]] based on 26 reviews.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/high_plains_drifter |title=High Plains Drifter |website=[[Rotten Tomatoes]] |accessdate=May 12, 2019 }}</ref>
[[Vincent Canby]] of ''[[The New York Times]]'' called the film "part ghost story, part revenge Western, more than a little silly, and often quite entertaining in a way that may make you wonder if you lost your good sense."<ref>Canby, Vincent (April 20, 1973). [https://www.nytimes.com/1973/04/20/archives/high-plains-drifter-opens-on-screen.html "'High Plains Drifter' Opens on Screen".] ''[[The New York Times]]''. 21.</ref> [[Gene Siskel]] of the ''[[Chicago Tribune]]'' gave the film 3 stars out of 4 and wrote, "What does work very well indeed is Eastwood's presence, personal style, and direction.
The film had its share of detractors. A number of critics thought Eastwood's directing derivative; [[Arthur Knight (film critic)|Arthur Knight]] in ''[[Saturday Review (U.S. magazine)|Saturday Review]]'' remarked that Eastwood had "absorbed the approaches of Siegel and Leone and fused them with his own paranoid vision of society".<ref name="McGilligan223">McGilligan, p. 223</ref> [[Jon Landau]] of ''[[Rolling Stone]]'' concurred, noting "thematic shallowness" and "verbal archness"; but he expressed approval of the dramatic scenery and cinematography.<ref name="McGilligan223" /> [[Nigel Andrews]] of ''[[The Monthly Film Bulletin]]'' wrote that "after ''[[Play Misty For Me]]'', ''High Plains Drifter'' emerges as a disappointingly sterile exercise in style, suggesting that the first thing Eastwood should do as a director is forget the lessons he has learned from other film-makers and start to forge a convincing style of his own."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Andrews |first=Nigel |date=August 1973 |title=High Plains Drifter |journal=[[The Monthly Film Bulletin]] |volume=40 |issue=475 |page=170 }}</ref> [[John Wayne]] criticized the film's iconoclastic approach; in a letter to Eastwood, he wrote, "That isn't what the West was all about. That isn't the American people who settled this country."<ref>Peter Biskind, "Any Which Way He Can", ''Premiere,'' April 1993.</ref>
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