Movie Hang Em High example essay topic

For my at home movie I watched Hang em' High directed by Ted Post. It is considered a spaghetti western that was made in America. In comparison to the film we watched in class, High Noon directed by Fred Zinnemann. These two westerns had many similarities and differences.

From differences in how the movie was actually shot, to the similarity of how both of the main characters are loners, these two movies connect all over on many different levels. High Noon was the story of a very brave man, Will Kane played by Gary Cooper, which is giving up his Sheriff position to become a homemaker with him wife. Just when they are leaving to start their new life together, there is news that four outlaws are coming back into town to seek revenge on Kane. High Noon, the title of the movie, is exactly when the four outlaw characters are meeting up in the town, and with the time getting closer, Kane realizes that his friends are harder to find. Almost every person he asks to help him deserts him, and the few that say they will help either back out at ht last minuet or are incompetent. Even his new wife decides she will leave this town on the noon train, with or without him.

When "high noon" does finally come Kane has no one to help him and he has to go and battle these four outlaws by his self. At the last possible second with some help from Helen Ramirez, an ex-love character played by Katy Jura do, she helps Amy realize she can save her husband and if she really loved him she would. Amy runs back into town and helps her husband kill two of the four guys, without her he may not have won the gun fight. At the end of the movie Sheriff Kane throws down his badge in front of the whole town in disgrace, he doesn't even need to say a word, and he and Amy ride off together to start their new life. In the movie Hang em' High, Clint Eastwood plays the main character Jed Cooper.

A group of men accuse him of stealing cattle and killing one of their neighbors. When he can't prove to them his innocence, they hang him. It just so happens that a U.S. Marshall was in the area and he saved Cooper's life. Then the Marshall brought him to the judge to see if he is guilty. Eventually, it was discovered that Cooper was innocent, and had bought the cattle from a criminal who killed the owner then sold the cattle to him. Cooper was finally released, but he now wanted revenge on the men who tried to lynch him.

The judge tells Cooper to give their descriptions to one of his marshal's and they will try to find them, but Cooper feels that it's not enough. The judge warns Cooper about taking the law into his own hands. When he told the judge that he was a formal law man, and he knows the law, the judge offers Cooper a job as a Marshall, and he takes the job. After accepting the job, he goes around and tried to gather up all men that tried to hang him. Along the way he has many side adventures, and tests the limits of right and wrong. In the end after a good old fashion western shoot out, Cooper goes back to town and decides that he's done, or so we think.

The judge made him realize that what he really wanted was revenge on the men, not a "Happily ever after" ending with Rachel. These two movies happen to have things in common, more than you would expect since they are totally different. First of all, a huge similarity is that both Kane and Jed are men of the law, Kane being a Sheriff and Jed being a Marshall. Also both of the main characters in this movie seem to be loners. Kane was deserted by his town when the outlaws came around, and Jed arrested / killed the outlaws, they both had to take care of business on there own, with the help of no one. Another similarity is that they both have women in their mists that want them to stop what they are doing.

Amy didn't want Kane to stay in town and shoot the outlaws, and Rachel wanted Jed to stop hunting down the men that did him wrong. But again it ended up that both men did not listen to the women in their lives and they did what a man had to do. Probably the most similar thing in these two movies is that they both have the bottom line of "A mans gotta do what a mans gotta do". These movies are also very different, in many ways. First of all the two movies start off totally differently. In High Noon quite a bit is going on before the suspense begins, while in Hang Em' High the suspense starts in the first few minuets.

Also you know right away that Kane is a good man, and in Hang em' High you don't know for sure what kind of man Jed is, for all you know about him he could be the bad guy that stole the cattle. The thing is you don't know until he is found innocent in court. "One more thing that is different in the movie is the way it was filmed. High Noon was filmed all in one town and there where not as many characters, you got to know only a few characters well.

But in Hang em' High it seems that even though there are more characters you still get to know them better, especially the bad guys. As you can see, these to westerns, High Noon and Hang em' High, very similar and different at the same time. They both portray the age old western tradition that "A mans gotta do what a mans gotta do". But they where very different because for the way they where filmed and how all the characters where interpreted throughout the film..