In short: Coogan’s Bluff (1968)

Happy to get rid of him for a couple of days, his boss sends Arizona Deputy Sheriff Coogan (Clint Eastwood) off to that strange and peculiar city known as New York, to transport an escaped fugitive the New Yorker’s somehow managed to catch back to Arizona.

Alas, things become difficult for Coogan from the start. Not only do the primitive city people he is confronted with ignore the fine difference between Arizona and Texas – certainly Coogan’s cowboy hat and boots don’t help there – they also take their dear time with actually putting the escapee into Coogan’s hand. It’s some liberal nonsense about illness at work. Yes, it is unfortunately that kind of movie.

Of course, once Coogan has acquired his man, he finds himself bashed over the head by some of the dirty hippie associates of the guy, and loses his gun to them. His masculinity stays intact, though, I’ll have you know. So our protagonist makes his way through New York looking for his man, while sneering at everyone disapprovingly and trying to fuck every woman he meets.

This Don Siegel joint shows Siegel and Eastwood at their most unpleasant: reactionary – the hippie disco scene must be seen to be believed –, quietly racist, and misogynist. There is a line of this sort of thing running through both men’s bodies of work, of course, but usually, there’s some human insight, some interest in people or violence or how people and violence go together and what that does to them, or even just an exciting plot to either make up for these failings or put them into a more human perspective, often even break them.

Here, there’s nothing of the sort. Coogan’s Bluff has no plot to speak of and consists exclusively of its protagonist wandering around New York sneering at people and things, from time to time exploding into violence on those weaker than him, and pressuring women into sex. Worst, the film never seems to think him anything but a hero, instead of the not terribly competent asshole he is.

But then, Coogan’s an Asshole would not make for the greatest movie title.

Three Films Make A Post: Nobody Runs Forever

Wrath of Man (2021): What do you do if you somehow end up with a plot and characters that’ll at most give you an hour of movie, even though you really need to make one that at least scratches at the two hour door? Guy Ritchie apparently decided to go for a structure full of time jumps and perspective changes, like a cut rate Tarantino without brains or taste. Not that surprisingly, instead of solving the problem of too little plot and flat characters, this exacerbates it by rubbing (really, pressing) the audience’s noses in it, going out of its way to not just show but repeat over and over that there’s nothing at all going on here you haven’t seen before or these actors haven’t done before – often in much better movies that actually had something you’d call pacing, or a script. The film also suffers from some of the worst tough guy dialogue I’ve encountered in a long time (perhaps because Ritchie’s struggling with the LA surroundings?). Particularly the first act is chock full of some of the most idiotic macho dialogue you’ll ever have the misfortune to hear.

Séance (2021): Keeping with films that seem to wildly overestimate their intelligence, how about this pseudo neo giallo by Simon Barrett (co-writer of most of the films of Adam Green). It’s one of those films that seem inexplicably smug about their own intelligence while never actually bothering to put the work into showing said intelligence, pretending stuff that’s obvious from the beginning is a last act surprise, and apparently believing that even the tiniest change in a cliché is something to be praised by an adoring audience.

Worse for a film that so obviously wants to be a giallo is the mediocre sense of style. It’s a professionally made film, don’t get me wrong, but if you’re looking for style as substance (or even just style interesting enough to be worth mentioning), or an ability to create moods via visual storytelling, you’re out of luck. But hey, at least Barrett manages to show us all of Suki Waterhouse’s facial expressions quite extensively – or rather her one facial expression.

The Mule (2018): Leave it to this piece of what at first looks like oldmansploitation with and by the one and only Clint Eastwood to save my mood. It’s a leisurely paced peace of work, pretty episodically structured, yet it is that way because it wants to do a bit more than give Clint a final outing, in the process waving in the direction not only of his serious classics but also of the film star phase of his career when he was perfectly willing to share the stage with an ape. So there’s the expected amount of tear-jerking old age business (the film works for ever single one of your tears, though) about a guy who only learns what’s most important in life when he’s at the end of it, but also a lot of old man swagger, curious humour that charms the way Eastwood’s character is supposed to charm, encounters with the modern world that leave our protagonist bemused, amused and a bit wiser, a tiny bit of action, and a tendency to treat every single character as a complicated human being, be they cops, Mexican cartel soldiers or migrant workers.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)

Somewhere in the US Midwest. A cucumber-cool criminal we’ll call Thunderbolt (Clint Eastwood), a nom de plume bestowed on him by the newspapers in lieu of his actual name, has to leave his hideout position as a preacher rather hastily when two former associates (Geoffrey Lewis and George Kennedy) find him and try to murder him. We will later learn it is all on account of a misunderstanding, as well as the George Kennedy character being one of those “shoot first, ask questions never” guys, but right now, Thunderbolt is lucky to stumble into the arms, well, freshly stolen car of a young gentleman who goes by the name of Lightfoot (Jeff Bridges).

Lightfoot, apart from being a bit of a smartass, is also perfectly willing to help a guy out, so he and Thunderbolt go on a bit of a road trip together. Their of course ensuing misadventures lead to a friendship between the two despite their differences in age – Thunderbolt’s a Korea vet, Lightfoot most certainly not – and temperament. Eventually, Thunderbolt manages to convince his – by now their – pursuers that there’s really no reason to murder one another, and everybody teams up to rob the same bank whose first robbery got Thunderbolt his name.

Apart from Quentin Tarantino, I can hardly imagine many directors living today trying to make something comparable to this comedic road movie/serious bank heist film by Michael Cimino. Current scriptwriting dogma (which is, as dogmas tend to be, wrong) would never accept a film giving itself so much time and its characters so much room to breathe before an actual plot sets in, for one, and where’s the hero’s journey in here!?

Of course, the film’s relaxed pacing, its loose yet thematically coherent structure and Cimino’s willingness to let the audience learn what his characters are about by simply letting us watch them in various interactions with one another and the slightly eccentric or crazy characters peopling this America are not exactly en vogue today either. Instead of that one inciting incident that explains everything about a character, this is a film about guys – alas in classic New Hollywood style there’s little room for female characters here – whose characters and personality have accrued over time in a way that makes flashbacks superfluous. You simply wouldn’t get at the cores of these people that way.

Which can also be a bit frustrating to a viewer in the 2020s, of course, when we get no actual background about Lightfoot at all, simply because he’s a bit of an innocent who hasn’t accrued all the damage and lifetime of the other men, and we are watching him in the process of doing so.

Cimino’s great at this phase of the film, too, providing ample space for Eastwood and Bridges to do their things, yet also filling the space around them with things and people of interest, as well as many beautiful location shots (cinematography is by Frank Stanley) for everyone to be dwarfed by. People being dwarfed by landscape seems to be rather important for the film’s, perhaps Cimino’s, worldview also, fitting a sensibility that’s not quite nihilist yet certainly contains the sort of absurdist view of peoples’ place in the world it very well might end up there later (spoiler alert: it does), even though right now, it treats its own view of the world still as a bit of a joke. Particularly the ending, when a very good turn of fate comes with a very unfair price, points rather obviously in that direction.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot isn’t exclusively a loose road movie, though, and once the bank heist plot starts in earnest, it and its director show they can do tight as well as loose, presenting a grubby, often funny but also focussed and actually exciting heist that packs everything what I want from a good heist movie into about half of its running time, until things become very 70s indeed.


All of this combines into a film that stands in many ways in marked contrast to the structure and rules obsessed style of filmmaking en vogue today (which also produces many a great movie, don’t get me wrong), suggesting exactly the kind of maverick outlaw spirit New Hollywood mythology so loves to praise this era of filmmaking for, through a willingness to simply let its hair down.

Three Films Make A Post: They dare to climb a terrifying new peak in suspense... all the way up to hell!

Where Eagles Dare (1968): For quite a few people, this war adventure directed by Brian G. Hutton and written by Alistair MacLean is a bit of a classic of men’s adventure cinema. I’ve never seen that in the film, and a recent re-watch unfortunately did not improve my impression. Mostly, the film feels bloated beyond all comprehension, taking up two and a half hours of one’s time for a series of plot twists and improbable plans that makes the most of our contemporary blockbusters look downright sane. Brian G. Hutton’s direction is bland, wasting many a theoretically cool set piece through tedious pacing, the script just goes on and on about everything, and the cast, well…This is as bland a performance as you’ll encounter by Clint Eastwood, and Richard Burton does his usual Richard Burton slumming thing that just doesn’t do it for me, just longer, in this case.

Falcon’s Gold aka Robbers of the Sacred Mountain (1982): I have a lot of room in my heart for Indiana Jones knock-offs (particularly of the Italian persuasion) but this cable TV movie – ergo, breasts – which is the understandably only directing credit for one Bob Schulz, really doesn’t even seem to try to grasp for an adventuring crown forever out of its reach. Instead of cheap thrills and silly ideas, we get Simon MacCorkindale making rubber faces that must go for human expressions on his planet, atrocious editing that ruins the few moments of theoretical excitement the film has on offer, and a script that doesn’t actually manage to hit even the simplest adventure movie tropes decently but does find space to include a pretty problematic “romance” between MacCorkindale and a character we first meet wearing her school uniform. Though, to be fair to the nudity does come not from her.

Romancing the Stone (1984): It is of course a bit unfair to compare a cheap TV movie to a decently budgeted studio production like Robert Zemeckis’s adventure romance with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, but still, this one shows how to trot classical adventure movie paths well. And thanks to its organic mix of slightly updated romance tropes and a lot of very well done adventure stuff, it doesn’t feel like much of an attempt to catch that Indiana Jones money at all, but rather like what it is: a film inspired by many of the same sources as Lucas and Spielberg that goes its own, frequently funny, always crowd-pleasing and very fun way from there. Diane Thomas’s script mostly manages the difficult task of having her heroine grow and finding that big roguish love without the latter destroying the former fantastically well; that Turner and Douglas where both in a phase where they could do little wrong certainly helps here too.


The film is also perfectly paced, looks and just feels fantastic thanks to Zemeckis and photography by the great Dean Cundey. Sure, one might complain this is film as candy, but when it’s as good as any candy you’ll get your hands on, who’s going to?

Pale Rider (1985)

A small group of honest, hard-working gold diggers under the unofficial leadership of Hull Barrett (Michael Moriarty) is in dire straits. Evil industrial gold mining tycoon Coy LaHood (Richard Dysart) wants to own the land they are panning gold on, and he isn't too particular on how to make the change of possession happen. LaHood has been sending his men (and his no-good son, played by a young and sleek Chris Penn) out to terrorize the diggers and lets his men rough them up when they come into the assortment of about a dozen buildings that go under the description of "town" here.

Apart from the fear for life and limbs, the digging hasn't been going so good for Barrett's group either, so the first families are starting to leave his fold for less dangerous and more lucrative pastures. Fortunately, Barrett's adopted daughter Megan (Sydney Penny) has a direct line to the big director in the sky. The girl prays for a miracle, and a few hours later a two-fisted, nameless preacher (Clint Eastwood) with an obvious dark past as a gunman rides into town.

The preacher fastly sides with Barrett and his people, even when LaHood calls in the evil, easily financially incentivized "marshal" Stockburn (John Russell) and his men to take permanent care of the miner situation. Stockburn just happens to be an old enemy of the preacher's (the film suggests he either killed the preacher or at least shot him and left him for dead), which probably makes it a bit easier for the nameless man to change his collar for a gun again.

The best thing I have to say about Pale Rider is that it isn't the worst film Eastwood appeared in (that would probably be one of the films with the ape), though it might very well be the worst one Eastwood directed himself. There's so much wrong with the film it's hard to know where to begin.

So, let's start out with the film's worst sins against my brain. Pale Rider leaves an at times ridiculous, at other times deeply unpleasant impression of something that just might be Eastwood's version of masturbating in front of a mirror; seldom has an anti-hero been so perfect, and his purported self-doubt been more perfunctory and unconvincing. Men either adore him or are killed by him, and all two of Michael Moriarty's women - hopeful wife and fifteen-year old daughter - want to fuck him. At least Clint does shy away from the daughter, but that still leaves us with a film that's basically a remake of Shane in which the kid wants to make sweet sweet love to her grandpa. Apart from being loved or feared by everyone, Clint is also utterly perfect in everything else, so perfect even that it is never in any doubt that he will de-priest (which doesn't seem to be a big thing here anyway), kill the bad guys, survive and ride on while his main groupie cries after him. Which, truth be told, robs the film of any tension - dramatic, moral or otherwise. Turns out that you not only need conflict but also at least a tiny bit of doubt about how the conflict will resolve in a narrative to create any tension. Neither actual conflict nor doubt are anything Eastwood seems to care to deliver in this display of painfully apathetic filmmaking.

The typically sedate pace of Eastwood's direction doesn't help to make the film any more exciting. Usually, Eastwood uses slowness to mirror the inner life of his characters and the rhythm of their existence, to make room to let the audience's understanding of the characters slowly grow. It's a bit like meditation, but with outbursts of violence.

Unfortunately, everyone here is a walking cliché of the least interesting sort, sprouting dialogue as dumb as I've ever heard (a point on which Michael Moriarty seemed to agree; at least his performance suggests it), and so the only thing the film's snail-like tempo shines a light on is that there's nothing of substance going on in it at all, and no life in it to speak of.

 

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