In 1977’s The Gauntlet, Dirty Harry is sent….

Oh wait, sorry.  This is not a Dirty Harry movie.  It sure feels like a Dirty Harry movie but it’s not.  And really, the character that Clint Eastwood plays in this movie, Phoenix Detective Ben Shockley, is different from Dirty Harry Callahan.  Shockley is a cynical (and single) detective who does things his own way.  He’s got that in common with Callahan.  But Shockley is also an alcoholic and that’s something that Harry would never allow himself to become.  Harry may be unpredictable but he’s disciplined and he’s always in control.  The other big difference is that Shockley has a little more faith in his fellow cops than Harry does.  As a result, Shockley gets set-up in a trap that Harry would have seen coming from miles away.

Shockley is sent to Las Vegas to pick up a prostitute named Augustina and bring her back to Arizona.  Augustina — who goes by Gus — is played by Sondra Locke.  This was the second film that Eastwood and Locke made together.  As a result of preparing for today’s Eastwood marathon, I watched all of the Eastwood/Locke films.  The Gauntlet features Locke’s best performance opposite Eastwood.  (She was good in The Outlaw Josey Wales but her role was also fairly small and simple.)  As opposed to her later films, Locke actually has a good deal of romantic chemistry when Eastwood in this film and, even more importantly, she actually seems invested in the role.  She plays Gus as being a feisty asskicker.  It doesn’t matter that she’s in jail or that she’s handcuffed or that she’s been escorted to another state.  Gus isn’t going to let anyone tell her what to do.   It’s impossible not to root for both her and Shockley in this film.

Of course, it turns out that Shockley has been set up.  Phoenix Police Commissioner Blakelock (William Prince) and District Attorney John Feyderspiel (Michael Cavanaugh) both have their own reasons for not wanting Gus to make it to Phoenix and they’re both willing to sacrifice Shockley to get to her.  They assumed that Shockley, being an alcoholic, would be easy to defeat.  Did they not consider that, alcoholic or not, Ben Shockley is played by Clint Eastwood?  Every attempt that is made to stop him just makes Shockley all the more determined to get Gus to Phoenix.  The film becomes a particularly violent take on It Happened One Night, going as far as to have Gus and Shockley take over a bus on their way to Phoenix.

Ah, the bus.  The Gauntlet climaxes with a scene in which literally thousands of bullets are fired into a bus that Shockley and Gus are driving through Phoenix.  It’s an exciting sequence, one that’s so gloriously over-the-top that you can’t help but feel that Eastwood was poking fun at his own persona.  At the same time, the sequence also works as a commentary on the blind obedience necessary for an authoritarian to come to power.  The cops who have lined up to shoot at the bus open fire when they’re ordered to, without asking why a bus has to be riddled with bullets.  Eastwood manages to mix a healthy dose of paranoia with his satire.

Though the plot (much like the bus) is riddled with holes, The Gauntlet‘s an entertaining film.  Between Eastwood and Locke’s chemistry and the explosive action sequences, The Gauntlet is a film you can’t look away from.