Category Archives: Film Review

Film Review: Joe Kidd (dir by John Sturges)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1972’s Joe Kidd opens with the title character (played by Clint Eastwood) in jail.  Joe is a New Mexico rancher and apparently, someone with a long history of getting in trouble with the law.  This time, he’s been arrested for poaching and disturbing the peace.  Given a choice between a fine and ten days in jail, Joe goes for the ten days.  Cowardly Sheriff Mitchell (Gregory Walcott) says he’s going to put Joe to work.  Joe Kidd snarls in response.

However, that’s before Luis Chama (John Saxon), a Mexican revolutionary, raids the courthouse and demands that all of his people’s ancestral land be returned to them.  Local landowner Frank Harlan (Robert Duvall) forms a posse to track Chama down.  Joe says that he has nothing against Chama but that changes once he discovers that Chama raided his ranch and beat up one of his ranchhands.  Joe joins the posse but he soon discovers that Harlan and his men are sadists who are more interested in killing Mexicans than actually capturing Chama.

I was actually pretty excited about watching Joe Kidd.  Clint Eastwood, Robert Duvall, and John Saxon, three of my favorite actors in the same movie!  How couldn’t I be excited?  Unfortunately, neither Duvall nor Saxon are at their best in this film.  Frank Harlan is a one-dimensional villain and Duvall doesn’t make much of an effort to bring any sort of unexpected nuance to the character.  Duvall doesn’t give a bad performance but it’s hard not to feel that Harlan is a character who could have been played by any forty-something actor.  It feels like waste to cast such a good actor in such a thin role.  (Add to that, I prefer Duvall when he plays a good guy as opposed to when he plays a bad guy.)  As for Saxon, this is probably one of his worst performances but his character is also rather underwritten and the film can’t seem to decide if it wants the viewer to be on his side or not.  Saxon delivers his lines in an exaggerated Mexican accent that makes it difficult to take Louis Chama seriously.  Gregory Sierra would have made a good Louis Chama but Saxon just seems miscast.

Fortunately, Clint Eastwood is always a badass, even in an uneven film like this.  Eastwood is at his best in the early scenes, when he’s grouchy and hungover and annoyed at finding himself in the jail.  He is believably outraged by Harlan’s tactics and, in typical Eastwood fashion, he delivers every pithy one-liner with just enough style to keep things interesting.  That said, Eastwood is let down by a script that never really makes it clear why Joe Kidd stays with the posse once it becomes clear that he’s traveling with a bunch of sociopaths.  Joe’s motivations are never really clear.  In the end, he seems like he goes through a lot of trouble to protect his farmland and get revenge for one of his ranch hands (who is just beaten up), just to then desert it all once all the shooting is over.

That said, Joe Kidd is a gorgeous film to look at and Joe makes creative use of a steam engine.  This isn’t the film to show anyone who isn’t already an Eastwood fan.  But, for those of us who are already fans of Clint, it’s enjoyable to watch him snarl, even if it is in a lesser film.

Film Review: Kelly’s Heroes (dir by Brian G. Hutton)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1970’s Kelly’s Heroes takes place in France during the Second World War.  The American army is moving through the country, liberating it town-by-town.  Private Kelly (Clint Eastwood) is a former lieutenant who was busted down in rank after leading a disastrous raid on the wrong hill.  (It was the fault of the generals but Lt. Kelly was set up as a scapegoat.)  When Kelly learns that the Germans are hiding a huge amount of gold in an occupied town, he gathers together a team of weary soldiers, misfits all, and plans to go AWOL to steal the gold for themselves.

Kelly’s Heroes was one of the big budget studio films that Eastwood made after finding stardom in Europe with Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti westerns.  This is very much an ensemble film, in the vein of The Dirty Dozen.  Indeed, Eastwood’s co-star, Telly Savalas, was in The Dirty Dozen.  Here, Savalas plays Big Joe, the sergeant who isn’t sure that he wants to put his men in danger for gold that may or may not exist.  Don Rickles plays Crapshoot who is …. well, imagine Don Rickles in the middle of World War II and you have a pretty good idea of who Crapshoot is.  Stuart Margolin, Harry Dean Stanton, Perry Lopez, Gavin MacLeod shows up as soldiers.  Carroll O’Connor plays the bombastic general who mistakes Kelly’s attempts to go AWOL for a brilliant tactical maneuver,  Like all of the senior officers in this film, O’Connor’s general is a buffoon.  Kelly’s Heroes was made during the Vietnam War and, much like Patton (released the same year), it attempts to appeal to both the establishment and the counterculture by making the heroes soldiers but their bosses jerks.

And that brings us to Donald Sutherland, who plays a tank commander named Oddball.  You may not have know this but apparently, there were hippies in the 40s!  Actually, I don’t think that’s true but there’s really no other way to describe Oddball than as a Hollywood hippie.  He’s a blissed-out, spacey guy who thinks nothing of accidnetally driving his tank through a building.  The films ask us to believe that the long-haired and bearded Oddball is a World War II tank commander and Sutherland is such a likable presence that it’s temping to just go with it.  Oddball was obviously included to bring in “the kids” but he does generate some needed laughs.  This is a very long movie and the comedic moments are appreciated.

Kelly’s Heroes is two-and-a-half hours long and it definitely could have been shorter.  Director Brian Hutton allows some scenes to drag on for a bit too long and he sometimes struggles to balance the moments of comedy with the moments of violent drama (quite a few character dies) but he does get good performances from his ensemble.  Eastwood’s taciturn acting style is nicely matched with Savalas’s more expressive style and it’s hard not smile at Don Rickles, insulting everyone as if they were guests at Joe Gallo’s birthday party.  The film, at times, doesn’t seem to know if it wants to be a satire or a straight heist film but the cast keep things watchable.  Eastwood even gets to show a few hints of the dry sense of humor that always hid behind the perpetually bad mood that often seemed to hang over him in his early films.  Whatever flaws the film may have, it was a box office success.  One year after this release of Kelly’s Heroes, Eastwood would make history as Dirty Harry.

Film Review: Two Mules For Sister Sara (dir by Don Seigel)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1970’s Two Mules For Sister Sara, Clint Eastwood and Shirley MacClaine take on the French!

It’s an often forgotten piece of history that, during the American Civil War, the French invaded Mexico and tried to turn it into a colony, one that was ruled by the hapless Archduke Maximillian.  The French were then led by Napoleon III, a rather enigmatic figure who spent his entire reign trying to live up to his namesake (and failing).  While the Americans would never have tolerated a French invasion of Mexico under normal circumstances, the Civil War provided enough of a distraction for Napoleon III to make his move in 1861.  Of course, as soon as the Civil War ended, America turned its attention to getting the French out of Mexico and, by the end of 1867, Maximillian had been executed and Napoleon III had withdrawn his forces.

Two Mules For Sister Sara takes place shortly after the end of the American Civil War, when the latest Mexican Revolution was in full swing.  Clint Eastwood plays Hogan, a former union officer who is now in Mexico working as a mercenary.  He’s been hired to help the revolutionaries attack a French garrison, in return for being given half of whatever is found inside.  Traveling through the desert, he comes across a group of bandits who are about to rape a woman named Sara (Shirley MacClaine).  Hogan guns down the bandits and is then shocked when Sara dons a habit and introduces herself as a nun who has been helping the revolutionaries.  She requests that Hogan travel with her and continue to protect her.  Hogan is reluctant, saying that he doesn’t want to become Sara’s mule when she already has one.  (That would be two mules for Sister Sara …. get it?)  But since Sara is a nun and claims to have no idea how to defend herself in the wilderness, Hogan agrees.  Sara and Hogan become unlikely allies as they get further and further involved in the Mexican Revolution.

Two Mules For Sister Sara owes a good deal to the Spaghetti westerns that were then coming out of Italy.  (Eastwood, of course, owed much of his stardom to his appearances in Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy.)  The Mexican Revolution was always a popular subject amongst the writers and directors of the Italian Spaghetti westerns.  Of course, Two Mules For Sister Sara is lacking in the political subtext that appeared in many of the Italian films.  Director Don Siegel may have been a liberal but, unlike many of his Italian contemporaries, he wasn’t a Marxist.  Instead, Two Mules For Sister Sara shows its Spaghetti influence in its panoramic visuals, it’s somewhat cynical sense of humor, and the casting of Eastwood as a taciturn mercenary whose main concern is using the revolution to make some money.  Eastwood plays a slightly more humorous version of his Man With No Name.  Hogan may be a cynic who doesn’t speak unless it’s absolutely necessary but he also possesses a good enough heart that there’s no way he’s going to abandon Sister Sara to fend for herself.  (The Man With No Name, on the other hand, would probably not have been so generous.)  Of course, Sister Sara has a secret of her own….

Supposedly, Eastwood and MacClaine didn’t get along particularly well while making Two Mules For Sister Sara.  (During preproduction, the film was envisioned as starring Eastwood and Elizabeth Taylor.)  If there was hostility between the two leads, it worked in the film’s favor because both Eastwood and MacClaine do a good job of playing off of each other.  MacClaine, at first, seems too contemporary for the role but, as the film progresses, she becomes more convincing.  There’s a revelation towards the end of the film that reveals that many of the moments that made MacClaine seem miscast were actually deliberate.  As for Eastwood, there’s a subtle humor running through his performance, as if he’s poking fun at his own tight-lipped persona. His performance here shows hints of the actor that he would become.

Two Mules For Sister Sara is an entertaining western, one that features Eastwood and Seigel celebrating and, at the same time, poking fun at the genre.  A year after this film, Eastwood and Seigel would make film history with Dirty Harry.

So, I Watched Paint Your Wagon (1969, Dir. by Joshua Logan)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Lisa Marie asked me to review Paint Your Wagon for Clint Eastwood’s birthday and, being a good sister, I agreed.  I have to learn to stop doing that.

Paint Your Wagon is a musical western starring a bunch of people who have done a lot of westerns but who still have no business singing, at least not in a movie.  If they want to sing in private, that’s fine.  Ben Rumson (Lee Marvin) and “Pardner” (Clint Eastwood) discover gold in a muddy creek and soon, the incredibly ugly town of No Name City springs up.  Because everyone in the town is a dude, everyone’s really lonely.  Then a Mormon shows up with two wives and the miners convince him to sell his youngest wife, Elizabeth (Jean Seberg) to the highest bidder.  Ben is always drunk but he still manages to buy Elizabeth.  Elizabeth says that she’s not going to marry Ben unless he builds her a cabin and also lets her marry Pardner as well.   Hello, polyamory. Eventually, a bull gets loose in the mines underneath No Name City and the entire town collapses but that’s okay because it was an ugly town and no one’s going to miss it.  Ben sings about how he was born under a wandering star so that means he can’t stay very long in once place, even if he does have a polyamorous marriage to look forward to.  Pardner sings that he likes to talk to the trees so he doesn’t need a town to live in.

My first thought on Paint Your Wagon is that it was really, really long.  It had a two and a half hour running time but it felt more like five or six.  My second thought is that movie looked really bad, like it was filmed through a mud filter.  It wasn’t just the buildings in the town that looked bad.  The entire movie looked dirty, oppressive, and depressing.  I like my musicals to have more color to them.  This movie looked like it needed an antibiotic.  My third thought was that, for a musical, none of the songs made much of an impression.  After the movie was over, I didn’t find myself humming any of them.  I can’t even remember what most of them were about.  Even if they had been better, Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood shouldn’t have been singing them.  Lee Marvin’s singing voice sounded like whiskey being poured out over cement.  Clint Eastwood’s voice was thin and he got stuck with all the sappy songs.  I’ll take old and grumpy Clint Eastwood over singing and sappy Clint Eastwood any day.  This was like watching a community theater production where you’re not supposed to care about how bad the performance is because you know everyone in the cast.  Finally, I thought that there wasn’t enough wagon painting.  The entire town was unpainted.  It wasn’t just the wagon that was being neglected.

The funniest thing about this movie is that was advertised as being “the comedy goldmine of 69.”  Nice.

I didn’t like Paint Your Wagon but don’t worry.  I’ll be watching Trouble With The Curve later today.  Now that one, I do like!

 

 

 

Hang ‘Em High (1968, directed by Ted Post)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

1889.  The Oklahoma Territory.  A former lawman-turned-cattleman named Jed Cooper (Clint Eastwood) is falsely accused of working with a cattle thief.  A group of men, led by Captain Wilson (Ed Begley) lynch him and leave Cooper hanging at the end of a rope.  Marshal Dave Bliss (Ben Johnson) saves Cooper, cutting him down and then taking him to the courthouse of Judge Adam Fenton (Pat Hingle).  Fenton, a notorious hanging judge, is the law in the Oklahoma territory.  Fenton makes Cooper a marshal, on the condition that he not seek violent revenge on those who lynched him but that he instead bring them to trial.  Cooper agrees.

An American attempt to capture the style of the Italian spaghetti westerns that made Eastwood an international star, Hang ‘Em High gives Eastwood a chance to play a character who is not quite as cynical and certainly not as indestructible as The Man With No Name.  Cooper starts the film nearly getting lynched and later, he’s shot and is slowly nursed back to health by a widow (Inger Stevens).  Cooper is not a mythical figure like The Man With No Name.  He’s an ordinary man who gets a lesson in frontier justice as he discovers that, until Oklahoma becomes a state, Judge Fenton feels that he has no choice but to hang nearly every man convicted of a crime.  (Judge Fenton was based on the real-life hanging judge, Isaac Parker.)  Over the course of this episodic film, Cooper becomes disgusted with frontier justice.

Hang ‘Em High is a little on the long side but it’s still a good revisionist western, featuring a fine leading performance from Clint Eastwood and an excellent supporting turn from Pat Hingle.  The film’s episodic structure allows for Eastwood to interact with a motley crew of memorable character actors, including Bruce Dern, Dennis Hopper, L.Q. Jones, Alan Hale (yes, the Skipper), and Bob Steele.  Hang ‘Em High has a rough-hewn authenticity to it, with every scene in Fenton’s courtroom featuring the sound of the gallows in the background, a reminder that justice in the west was often not tempered with mercy.

Historically, Hang ‘Em High is important as both the first film to be produced by Eastwood’s production company, Malpaso, and also the first to feature Eastwood acting opposite his soon-to-be frequent co-star, Pat Hingle.  Ted Post would go on to direct Magnum Force.

The Adventures of the Man With No Name: A Fistful Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Originally, Sergio Leone envisioned none other than Henry Fond as The Man With No Name.

The year was 1964 and Sergio Leone was searching for the right actor to star in the movie that would become A Fistful Of Dollars.  The film, which reimagined Akira Kurosawas’s Yojimbo as a western, centered around a mysterious, amoral gunslinger whose name was unknown.  Leone needed an American or a British name to star in the film so that it could get distribution outside of Italy.  Leone had grown up watching Henry Fonda movies, all dubbed into Italian.  He later said he wanted to cast Fonda because he always wondered what Fonda’s voice actually sounded like.

After realizing that a major Hollywood star would never agree to star in a low-budget Italian western, Leone then offered the role to Charles Bronson.  Bronson read the script and said it didn’t make sense to him.  Leone went on to offer the role to Henry Silva, Rory Calhoun, Tony Russel, Steve Reeves, Ty Hardin, and James Coburn.  Everyone was either too expensive or just not interested.  Finally, it was actor Richard Harrison who, after tuning down the part himself, suggested that Leone offer the role to Clint Eastwood.  Eastwood, then starring on the American western Rawhide, could play a convincing cowboy.  Leone followed Harrison’s advice and Eastwood, eager to break free of his nice guy typecasting and hoping to restart his film career, accepted.  The rest is history.

Eastwood would only play The Man With No Name in three films but, in doing so, he changed the movies and the popular conception of the action hero forever.

All three of the Man With No Name movies have been reviewed on this site.  But, since today is Clint’s birthday, I thought I’d take a look at how these classic films are holding up, over 60 years since the Man With No Name made his first appearance.

A Fistful Of Dollars (1964)

Having now seen both this film and Yojimbo, it’s remarkable how closely A Fistful of Dollars sticks to Kurosawa’s original film.  Interestingly, it’s clear that Eastwood patterned his performance of Toshiro Mifune’s in Yojimbo and yet, at the same time, he still managed to make the role his own.  The Man With No Name rides into a western town, discovers that there are two groups fighting for control of the area, and he coolly plays everyone against each other.  Whether it’s planting the seeds of distrust, exploiting an enemy’s greed, or being the quickest on the draw, the Man With No Name instinctively knows everything that he has to do.  Even when he’s getting beaten up by the bad guys, The Man With No Name always seems to be one step ahead.  Today, a western in which everyone is greedy and looking out for themselves isn’t going to take anyone by surprise.  But if you’ve watched enough westerns from the 40s and 50s, you’ll understand how unique of a viewpoint Leone brought to the genre.  Eastwood’s amoral gunslinger was such a surprise that, when the film aired on television, a scene was shot by the network in which Harry Dean Stanton played a prison warden who released The Man With No Name (seen only from behind) on the condition that he clean up the town.

For A Few Dollars More (1965)

For A Few Dollars More finds The Man With No Name working as a bounty hunter and teaming up with Colonel Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef) to take down El Indio (Gian Maria Volonte) and his gang (including Klaus Kinski as a hunchback.)  This is my least favorite of the trilogy but that doesn’t mean that For A Few Dollars More is a bad film.  Being the least of three masterpieces is nothing to be ashamed of.  Eastwood and Van Cleef were two of the best and it’s interesting to see them working together.  El Indo is a truly loathsome villain and the members of his gang are all memorably horrid.  If it’s my least favorite, it’s just because I prefer the wit of A Fistful of Dollars and the epic storytelling of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.  Speaking of which…

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966)

This is it.  The greatest western ever made, an epic film that features Leone’s best direction, Ennio Morricone’s greatest score, and brilliant performances from Eastwood, Van Cleef, and especially Eli Wallach.  It’s hard to know where to start when it comes to praising The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.  It’s a nearly three-hour film that doesn’t have a single slow spot and it has some of the most iconic gunfights ever filmed.  Leone truly found his aesthetic voice in this film and that it still works, after countless parodies, is evidence of how great it is.  I appreciate that this film added a historical context to the adventures of The Man With No Name.  (Personally, I think this film is meant to be a prequel to A Fistful of Dollars, just because The Man With No Name is considerably kinder in this film than he was in the first two movies.  The Man With No Name that we meet in A Fistful of Dollars would never have gotten Tuco off that tombstone.)  The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly takes place during the Civil War and, along with everything else, it’s an epic war film.  While America fights to determine its future, three men search for gold.  The cemetery scene will never be topped.

American critics did not initially appreciate these films but audiences did.  Clint Eastwood may have been a television actor when he left for Italy but he returned as an international star.  And, to think, it all started with Sergio Leone not being able to afford Henry Fonda.

Film Review: Francis In The Navy (dir by Arthur Lubin)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1955’s Francis In The Navy, Donald O’Connor plays Lt. Peter Sterling, an officer in the U.S. Army who gets word that his best friend, a talking mule named Francis (voice of Chill Wills), is about to be auctioned off by the U.S. Navy.  Sterling rushes to the Naval base but, along the way, his wallet gets stolen, he gets mistaken for an AWOL soldier, and Francis gets sold to a laboratory.

Hold on, I’m re-reading that last paragraph to make sure that I didn’t hallucinating typing all that…

Peter argues that he’s not the AWOL soldier, he’s just someone who looks just like him.  Peter gets tossed into the psychiatric ward.  Francis advices Peter …. yes, the mule that can talk gives Peter advice on how to get out of the mental ward …. to pretend to be the AWOL sailor.  Unfortunately, the sailor is a champion boxer so that means Peter will have to enter the ring.  Peter, needless to say, is not a boxer.  Peter also falls for a nurse (Martha Hyer) but — uh oh! — she’s the sister of the AWOL soldier.  Well, that’s kind of awkward.  I don’t have a brother but if I did, I doubt I would ever want to make out with anyone who looked like him.  Like seriously….

Hold on, I’m re-reading that last paragraph to see if there’s anything that I need to add.

Like, seriously, what the Hell?  This movie has a talking mule, an oddly incestuous subtext, and Donald O’Connor playing two roles.  Doing some research, I discovered that this was the sixth film to deal with the adventures of Peter Sterling and Francis.  This was the last one of them to star Donald O’Connor, who apparently resented getting upstaged by a mule.  There was one more Francis movie after this one and it starred Mickey Rooney.  It was called Francis In The Haunted House so who knows?  Maybe I’ll review it for our October horrorthon.  (Don’t count on it.)

As weird as this film is, it’s kind of likable.  Donald O’Connor is a favorite of mine and this one featured O’Connor in two roles, as both the hapless Peter and also the sailor who goes AWOL and repeatedly refuses to help Peter out.  And, while I’m not really sure why he’s talking, Francis was actually cute.  I enjoyed the boxing scene where he attempted to help Peter out.  Unfortunately, there’s only so much a mule can do.

As for why I’m reviewing this movie, it’s because Clint Eastwood is in the cast.  He plays Jonesy, a friend of the AWOL sailor who becomes a friend of Peter’s.  Now, to be clear, Clint doesn’t do a lot in the movie.  He works Peter’s corner during the boxing match.  Otherwise, he spends most of the time in the background and he has a few scenes where he hangs out with the rest of the AWOL sailor’s friends.  That said, Clint does make an impression.  Even in this very early role, he had an impressive screen presence.  He’s the tallest guy there and he’s got the best hair.  Once you spot him in a scene, it’s hard to look away.

Francis In The Navy is historically significant because it’s the first film for which Clint Eastwood received on-screen credit.  (Eastwood previously appeared in films like Revenge of the Creature and Tarantula but his name wasn’t included in the credits.)  It’s an odd film, one that’s likable if you’re in an undemanding mood and you enjoy goof — extremely goofy — humor.  It would be forgotten if not for Eastwood’s appearance.  Seen today, this film, like Eastwood’s other early appearances, reminds us that everyone started somewhere.

Bird (1988, directed by Clint Eastwood)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Forest Whitaker stars as the legendary saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker.  The film, which is structured around flashbacks and time jumps and features some of the most beautifully-done transitions that I’ve ever seen, follows Parker as he plays his saxophone, challenges the jazz purists who his own individual style, and looks for work in both America and France.  Along the way, we watch as he befriends and learns from Dizzy Gillespie (Samuel Wright), mentors a young trumpet player named Red Rodney (Michael Zelniker), and has a complex relationship with a white jazz lover named Chan Parker (Diane Venora).  Throughout his life, Charlie Parker struggles with his addiction to heroin and alcohol, occasionally getting clean to just then fall back into his habit.  To its credit, the film avoids most of the biopic cliches when it comes to portraying Parker’s addiction.  Parker accepts that he’s an addict, just as he accepts that he has a talent that is destined to revolutionize American music.

Director Clint Eastwood has always been a fan of jazz and he actually saw Charlie Parker perform when he was a young man.  His love of jazz had been present in almost every modern-era film that he has directed, staring with Play Misty For Me’s lengthy trip to the Monterey Jazz Festival.  Bird was a passion project for Eastwood, the first film that Eastwood directed without also appearing in.  (Eastwood doesn’t star in his second directorial effort, Breezy, but he does have a brief and silent cameo as a man standing on pier.)  Eastwood takes a nonlinear approach to telling the story, eschewing the traditional bopic format and instead putting the focus on Parker’s music.  Eastwood was able to get several never bef0re-released recordings of Parker performing and, when Whitaker is blowing into his saxophone in the film, we’re actually hearing Parker.  Eastwood’s direction captures the smoky atmosphere of the jazz clubs where Parker and Gillespie made their name while the nonlinear style reflects the feeling of just letting a song take you to wherever it’s going.  This is a movie about jazz that plays out like a jazz improvisation.

Forest Whitaker gives an amiable and charismatic performance as Charlie Parker, playing him as someone who has found both an escape and peace in his music, even as he physically struggles with the ravages of his drug addiction.  Whitaker won the Best Actor at Cannes for his performance in Bird.  Eastwood received the Golden Globe for Best Director.  Bird feels like it was labor of love for both of them.  Bird may not have set the box office on fire when it was originally released but it remains one of the best jazz films.

I review TIGHTROPE (1984) – starring Clint Eastwood! 

Posted on by Bradley Crain

In TIGHTROPE, a psychiatrist makes the following comment to New Orleans police detective Wes Block (Clint Eastwood) while he’s trying to catch a serial killer who’s targeting sex workers:

“There’s a darkness inside all of us, Wes; you, me, and the man down the street. Some have it under control. Others act it out. The rest of us try to walk a tightrope between the two.”

This statement definitely hits home to Wes, whose personal life has gotten rather dark. His wife has recently left him and their two daughters (Alison Eastwood and Jenny Beck), and the detective seems to be drowning himself in his work, at times in a bottle, and at other times in the arms of some of the local ladies of the night. Whenever he does try to plan something with his girls, his job always seems to get in his way. As he investigates the murders in a variety of the seediest locations in New Orleans, we learn that Wes is very much into the kinds of women who inhabit these places, and he gives into his secret desires on multiple occasions. This becomes personal when the killer, who knows that Wes is the detective in charge of the case, begins targeting and killing some of the very same women who helped ease Wes’ emotional pain, and then taunts him about it. It becomes even more personal when the killer goes after his daughters and his new “legitimate” lady friend Beryl Thibodeaux (Geneviève Bujold), a rape counselor Block has gotten to know as part of the broader investigation. As the bodies continue to pile up, will Wes be able to stop the killer in time to save the most precious people in his life?!!

TIGHTROPE is a special movie to me. I’ve mentioned this before in other reviews, but FOX-16 out of Little Rock played a lot of good movies in the mid to late 80’s when I was a teenager. Some of those movies hold a strong nostalgic value in my life because I first discovered them and my true love of movies during those years. The channel advertised and showed TIGHTROPE, and many other Eastwood films, quite often. Of course, the movie broadcast on FOX-16 was heavily edited, and I didn’t realize the true sexual complexity of detective Wes Block until I was quite a bit older. In the original DIRTY HARRY, there’s a running gag where different people ask Eastwood’s iconic character, “Why do they call you Dirty Harry?” From what we see in TIGHTROPE, if someone asked, “Why do they call you Dirty Wes,” the answer would be more than obvious as he engages in various kinky forms of sexual relations with at least three of the sex workers he hits up for information. The killer knows of his sexual activities with these women, even watching on occasion. The movie leans hard into this connection between Wes’ kinky sex that often involves handcuffs, and the kinship that the killer feels with Wes when he’s perpetrating violence on these same women. It adds an uneasy and unsettling quality to the proceedings when the killer publicly taunts his rival, who understandably doesn’t want his peers to know of his more private nocturnal activities. He can’t fool his new lady friend, the tough as nails Beryl Thibodeaux, who senses his hidden desires and accepts him for who he is, especially after spending some quality time with him and his daughters. I like Genevieve Bujold in the role and the French-Canadian actress is able to even nail the local accent on a couple of occasions. I also wanted to mention the excellent chemistry between Clint Eastwood and his real-life daughter Alison, who play father and daughter in the movie as well. Alison was only 12 years old when TIGHTROPE was released, but she gives a strong performance as the older daughter who’s still trying to come to terms with her parents’ divorce. The killer really messes up when he targets her. 

I’ll tell anyone who’s willing to listen that I love the city of New Orleans as a movie location. I personally love to visit the city and partake in its fun atmosphere and wide variety of excellent cuisine. TIGHTROPE hits many of the highlights of New Orleans in 1984… Bourbon Street, Jackson Square, the Super Dome, the Creole Queen, a warehouse full of Mardi Gras floats, the famous cemeteries, Randi Brooks in a hot tub, etc. etc. One thing about New Orleans is that its famous streets like Bourbon Street have not been cleaned up or become “family friendly” in the same way as a place like Times Square in New York City. To this day, it retains that same feeling of sexual decadence that is portrayed here in 1984. 

I personally consider TIGHTROPE to be a must-see film for fans of Clint Eastwood, as Wes Block is a wholly unique addition to his cavalcade of tough cop characters, and he makes us justifiably uncomfortable at times. Eastwood’s conflicted performance, the serial killer storyline and the fun New Orleans locations add up to a very good movie that’s aimed squarely at adults. 

The Super Cops (1974, directed by Gordon Parks)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

David Greenberg (Ron Liebman) and Robert Hantz (David Selby) are two tough and smart New York City cops who become detectives and play by their own rules.  They make arrests off-duty.  They drive their lieutenants crazy.  They bust drug dealers and prostitutes and single-handedly clean up their police precinct.  They’re the Super Cops and they’re even nicknamed Batman and Robin.  When they throw punches, a graphic “POW” appears on screen with a sound effect.

There’s an old saying about how, when the truth is different from the legend, always print the legend.  That’s certainly the case here.  The real-life David Greenberg went into politics and ended up doing time for mail fraud, insurance fraud, and obstruction of justice.  Robert Hantz was busted for possessing marijuana while he was on vacation in the Bahamas.  The arrest led to a demotion and Hantz quit the force as a result.  The film hints at Greenberg and Hantz’s involvement with the Knapp Commission, which investigated police corruption in the 70s.  (Lisa wrote about it when she reviewed Serpico.)  But the film does not mention that the Knapp Commission suspected that Greenberg and Hantz murdered two drug dealers.

You don’t get any of that with The Super Cops, which tries to mix the grittiness of films like The French Connection, The Seven-Ups, and Serpico with moments of cartoonish comedy and it really doesn’t work.  (Years after The Super Cops was released, Hill Street Blues proved that gritty drama and dark comedy could be mixed but it has to be done just right.)  Ron Liebman overacts while David Selby doesn’t seem to be acting at all.  (Liebman and Selby are both good actors but you wouldn’t know that from this movie.  For Liebman, I suggest checking out his performance in Night Falls On Manhattan.  For Selby, I recommend an overlooked dark comedy called Headless Body in Topless Bar.)  It’s hard to believe that Gordon Parks went from doing Shaft to doing this.  Shaft would have tossed the Super Cops through a window.  Popeye Doyle would have given him an assist.

There is one good thing to note about The Super Cops.  Edgar Wright is a fan of this film and it partially inspired the far superior Hot Fuzz.