Riches and Redemption on the Cocaine Superhighway.

Family’s the most important thing. Don’t do what I did. I put work in front of family. I thought it was more important to be somebody out there, than the failure I was in my own home. I was a terrible father, a terrible husband. I blew my chance. I didn’t deserve forgiveness. This is the last one, so help me God, this is the last one.
— Clint Eastwood, THE MULE trailer.

Underneath the story of the 90-year-old mule for a Mexican drug cartel, is the story of a man filled with regret, trying to reconcile with his estranged family; THE MULE is the story of how that man managed to land back in their good graces, before it was too late.

By becoming a drug mule.

Uh, well, when you put it that way, he’s still not a good man. Just a richer one, who could afford to be a better person.

88-year-old Clint Eastwood is day-lily breeder Earl Stone, a cantankerous 80-year-old Korean War vet, a legend on the competitive day-lily circuit (as silly as I know that sounds – yet there are worlds out there that we will never know exist, fully-formed and spinning in their own universes. For the record, a “day-lily” is a plant whose flowers bloom for one day only). We meet Earl winning a flower competition, while his daughter (played by Clint’s real life daughter Alison Eastwood) is getting married, the family wondering whether Earl will show up, his ex-wife Mary (Diane Weist), resigned to the fact that he won’t. Over a beer with pals after the competition, we see in Earl’s eyes that he remembers the occasion, but chooses to stay at the bar…

10 Years Later…

Forced into foreclosure due to the internet sucking away his Illinois flower business (which he promoted only with brochures and word of mouth), Earl desperately accepts a driving job offered to him by a young stranger, that promises quick cash.

So begins Earl’s life as a drug mule, at age 90, breezily criss-crossing the state in his truck, like Philo Beddoe criss-crossing the San Fernando Valley; all that’s missing is the ape. Due to his reliability, non-descript demeanor, and invisibility to law enforcement, Earl becomes the cartel’s most successful mule. The armed, hard gangbangers who load his truck with shipments become friendly with him, dubbing him “Tata” (Grandfather), showing him how to use cellphones and GPS, for which Luddite Earl only has contempt.

The cartel’s godfather Laton (Andy Garcia) becomes nervous with Earl’s quantities, and assigns his trusted adopted boy Julio (Ignacio Serricchio) to shadow Earl. Ignacio plays the affable, carefree Don West in the 2018 LOST IN SPACE series, so it was a shock to see him rake Clint over the coals, with threats to kill him if his deliveries were late. Eventually, Ignacio’s character would also fall under Earl’s devil-may-care spell. That’s for a Scriptwriter Reason we’ll address later.

CUT TO:

Drug Enforcement Administration Offices: we are suddenly assaulted by the visages of Laurence Fishburne as DEA Boss (directed by Clint in MYSTIC RIVER) and Bradley Cooper as Detective Colin Bates (directed by Clint in AMERICAN SNIPER). Movie’s cool quotient just rose higher than when we saw Andy Garcia as a drug lord! And Bates’s partner – Michael Peña (directed by Clint in MILLION DOLLAR BABY – cool quotient just went through the roof)! They speak of the inordinate amount of drugs being ferried around the state – and how their net is closing in on one particular ferrier…

The drug story in THE MULE is compelling enough, inspired by real life mule Leo Sharp, who did, in fact, breed day-lilies and was a WWII vet (made famous by Sam Dolnick’s 2014 article in the New York Times – The Sinaloa Cartel’s 90-Year-Old Drug Mule), but the layers under the drug story are the film’s real hook: Earl’s whole existence revolves around atoning for his sins in neglecting his family. With the delirious amounts of cash from drug running, he now has the resources for atonement (not only the money, but the free time the money affords, that can be put towards being more present for those he cared about), as he renovates his local Veterans’ clubhouse, gives cash to charities, and pays for his granddaughter’s wedding and attends it.

This atonement element is wholly a construct by screenwriter Nick Schenk to give the story gravitas. Sharp’s motivations were never identified, and he died before the moviemakers could interview him (December 2016, aged 92; arrested in 2011, sentenced in 2014 to 3 years, released after 1 year for failing health).

Yet, the atonement may be inspired by real life – not Sharp’s life – Clint’s life.

After 50 years of playing the strapping avenger, now Clint’s stance is stooped, his pants too high, his arms skeletal, his voice a mere rasp of its former velvet, yet he is having a ball playing this same crotchety, unfiltered Old Man Shouts At Cloud, that he premiered in GRAN TORINO (2008), and followed with TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE (2012). For decades, Clint’s life has been a slew of acting, directing, producing, travel, mayoral commitments, composing, etc., so he can easily be associated with the regrets that Earl might harbor. We know Clint has scattered families from several wives and girlfriends; son Scott Eastwood tells of how Clint never mollycoddled his kids (maybe due to not being there?); of how Scott never got handed a role through his famous father and had to audition like everybody else (which he did under pseudonyms to avoid favoritism) – a measure of Clint’s principles, or just another example of Clint not having the time to attend to his family?

In the film’s trailer, Clint gives that above speech in voiceover, but in the film, the sentiment is the same, though the words are altered, as he sits with Bradley Cooper at a diner, two strangers chatting, neither knowing who the other is. Only Clint knows the price he paid for choosing work over family. Is this film a last prayer for forgiveness?

The most poignant scene is family-related, as ex-wife Mary is put into a hospice to live out her last days. Earl gets word during his drug run, and detours to be with her. Mary is taken aback that he would come at all, and as he sits by her side, we hear Mary’s death rattle; disturbing and tough to watch, she forgives Earl in literally her last breaths. Movie unflinchingly shows every lung-tearing moment of Mary’s passing; driving home the message that we should not take our loved ones for granted.

My mule don’t like people laughing.
— Clint Eastwood, A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS.

I find it amusing that the film goes to great lengths to retain our love for Earl’s initial gang members, by overhauling the Latino cast in the third act. By this time, Ignacio’s Julio had morphed into a “good guy,” with Earl giving him advice on leaving the business; even Garcia’s godfather was portrayed having a heart of gold, welcoming Earl into his party mansion and getting him laid with two bimbos. Well, all these “lovable” Chicanos are overpowered by harder, meaner, trigger-happy cartel cholos, led by Clifton Collins Jr. as the new “evil” godfather. Why? So that when Earl is caught, we imagine the “nice” felons whom we got to know, won’t go down with Earl; rather, the horrible cholos who replaced Garcia and mistreated Ignacio will take the fall. A little taint of Hollywood.

The final scenes give the wrong impression of justice. Since Cooper’s and Pena’s detectives were pursuing this case throughout the movie, it seems like they’ve made a landmark bust when they pick up Earl. Uh, nope. DEA busted the guy ferrying drugs. Not the actual cartel or any kingpins or even capos. They only got the carrier – the guy who literally knows nothing else about the organization that he works for on a subcontractor basis. No matter how the real life situation panned out, in the movie, we never see the horrible gangbangers’ fates, and Earl faces the music alone. But – he’s only a mule, fellas! He never did drugs, he never pushed drugs, he never manufactured drugs —

The worst crime he’s ever committed is wearing his pants too high.

END

On iron horse he rides / On iron horse he gladly needs a transmission overhaul…

Red Film over White Eyes.

…and they weren’t even Indians. We called them that by accident – and we still call them that! Like, we knew in a month that it wasn’t “Indians” – but we just don’t give a shit. We never correct it!…
— Louie C.K., LIVE AT THE BEACON THEATER, 2011.

Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond dismounts the horse he doesn’t ride and unplucks the headdress he doesn’t wear, to travel into the dangerously racist heart of Hollywood and discover how cinema, since its inception, has shaped the false perception of the American Indian. This documentary goes in search of – and finds – the REEL INJUN.

Jesse Wente
Ojibway film critic

I watched REEL INJUN with tears edging my eyes; a complete people wiped out by the white bastard children of European bastards, then that genocide justified by rewriting history through popular media. REEL INJUN doesn’t cover the Indian mass murders in the name of God perpetrated by Columbus from 1492 onwards, nor concerns itself with the millions of Indian slayings in the name of American progress in the period before the designated “Indian Wars” (first documented in 1776). This doc is not here to shout into the wind about the genocide, yet in its own way, it highlights it, by showing us how movies (made exclusively by White Eyes) worked to either downplay the genocide (with only a few Indians killed in self-defense), deny its existence (Indians portrayed living side-by-side with White Eyes) or justify its execution (by dehumanizing Indians, depicting massacres of White Eyes wagon trains, regarding Indians as “savages” and a hindrance to civilization).

Russell Means
Oglala-Lakota activist

REEL INJUN is a galvanizing gallop through the agitprop-sodden American film industry (which sprang into infancy, coincidentally, during the Wild West frontier era), snaking and shotgunning through the periods of noble savage, to just plain savage, from sensual panther to white woman threat, from spiritual warrior to blight on civilization; taking us from the first Indian penny reel (Thomas Edison’s 1894 SIOUX GHOST DANCE), through the 1930s silent slapstick era, the racist westerns of the 1950’s, the respectful renaissance of the 1990’s, all the way to 2001’s stunning “inside job” ATANARJUAT: THE FAST RUNNER, a film about Indians made by Indians for a world audience, rather than a film about Indians made by White Eyes for White Eyes.

Talking heads include Western and Native filmmakers (Clint Eastwood, Jim Jarmusch, Cheyenne-Arapaho Chris Eyre, Inuk Zacharias Kunuk), Native film critics and historians (Ojibway Jesse Wente, Seminole Melinda Micco), actors and activists (Oglala-Lakota Russell Means, Cherokee Wes Studi, Lakota John Trudell), all probing the Indians’ journey on film and how they and society contributed/reacted to it.

Wes Studi
Cherokee actor

REEL INJUN wends its way through so many filmic indecencies perpetrated on Indian culture, it can be said that while Natives were being killed off literally in the real world, their philosophy, their humanity, their essence was being systematically killed off in the minds of the U.S. populace, to be replaced by simplistic tropes: from the age-old racism of using white actors in Indian roles (Chuck Connors as GERONIMO?! Cree comedian Charlie Hill remarks that’s like Adam Sandler playing MALCOLM X); to Indian attire (only a certain tribe wore headbands and/or feathered headdresses, yet these accoutrement became staples for all tribes); to Indian dialects (sometimes filmmakers would just dub Indians with English audio running backwards); to their very names (activist Russell Means tells us: “Tašúŋke Witkó does not mean Crazy Horse; he was a great horse trainer,” so it is more along the lines of “spirited horses.” See how the White Eyes turned it into a veiled insult?) Even that supposed tribute to Crazy Horse – a sculpture being carved from a mountain in the Black Hills, South Dakota, the largest ever statue to a human – is dubious. And ignorantly ironic. Using explosives to carve a mountain monument, venally creating a tourist trade and despoiling the ecosystem is exactly the opposite of what Tašúŋke Witkó would have desired. And “most experts agree almost every photo of him is a fake” – so it’s not even an authentic likeness!

Angela Aleiss
Columbia Univ. Ph.D

Although the general timbre of American sentiment towards Indians in film was disrespectful, there have always been pockets of dissent through the decades (meaning there were certain characters within the disrespectful films and sometimes singular films themselves affording the Indian respect: 1955’s CHIEF CRAZY HORSE, though it starred Victor Mature in the title role, was actually sympathetic to the Lakota Sioux; Adam West in 1962’s GERONIMO asking, “Why are we fighting them?”; LITTLE BIG MAN’s (1970) empathetic stance towards the Cheyenne nation; Indian Green Beret BILLY JACK (1971) retaliating against corrupt white police with innumerable Spock chops and roundhouse kicks…

The movie STAGECOACH spearheaded the downslide. Director John Ford’s 1939 template for the American western depicted Indians blatantly as a savage, bloodthirsty impediment to American progress and a threat to white women and babies. Jesse Wente calls it “the iconic western… and one of the most damaging movies for Native people in history…” Wente is as vicious in his indictment of Ford as Ford made his Indians, “STAGECOACH summed up and gave the opinion of Native people for decades to the populace in the U.S. – and it’s because of John Ford that they thought of us like that, and that Native people might have even thought of themselves.”

Chris Eyre Cheyenne-Arapaho filmmaker

That movie also introduced the “greatest Indian killer in history” – that gun-totin’ white-hatted, hip-swaggerin’, jaw-drawlin’ American icon Marion Robert Morrison (aka John Wayne). I never realized how despicable his actions were until watching this documentary. Why? Because I was as indoctrinated as the rest of humanity to Wayne’s inherent “righteousness” (or “white-eousness”) as the real America. We are shown a scene from THE SEARCHERS (1956) where Wayne shoots a dead Indian in the face so that he cannot pass peacefully into the spirit world. A WTF super-bigot moment for modern viewers, but passively accepted in 1956 when Indians were regarded as the embodiment of evil, backwards, bloodthirsty and white-woman-rapers. Here’s the thing: one might contend Wayne was only playing characters. But in a 1971 Playboy interview, his despicable views were aired quite unequivocally.

Melinda Micco
Assoc Prof Mills Coll.

The revisionist nature of the John Wayne era of westerns is unconscionable. They revised reality. This is why I’ve always disagreed with the term “revisionist” applied to the 1990’s spate of westerns portraying Native Americans more judiciously and humanely (DANCES WITH WOLVES, LAST OF THE MOHICANS, et al). Called “revisionist” because they revised the notion of the hostile evil Native; what they were actually doing was RESTORING a semblance of veracity to the portrayal of Natives as fellow humans.

If I have lost all respect for John Wayne, I gained an infinite amount for Marlon Brando. We’ve all heard of him sending Sacheen Littlefeather up to decline his Oscar when he won for THE GODFATHER (1973), on the grounds of mistreating Indians. Up till now, I was unaware of the bigger picture.

In February 1973, the American Indian Movement seized the town of Wounded Knee in a political protest and faced off against armored FBI for 71 days. It was a small scale war. Russell Means was there: “We are prepared to die!” Man, that guy is so REAL! Brando declined the Oscar to protest the U.S. government declaring war on the Indian nations at Wounded Knee (a site symbolic for its previous Indian massacre in 1890). Sacheen gave a gracious and humane speech – then the White Eyes press starts in with “she rented her tribal dress,” “she wasn’t truly native,”… Ignorance born of 100 years of inculcation that Indians were un-human. The final laugh goes to the Indian nations – according to Means, morale at Wounded Knee was flagging and Brando and Littlefeather turned it around with that one symbolic move!

John Trudell
Lakota activist

John Trudell Lakota activist (who took over Alcatraz in 1970 in protest) has a long-standing philosophy that overrides any I have ever heard from any political party or activist group: “We’re not Indians and we’re not Native Americans – we’re older than both concepts. We’re the People. We’re human beings. Everyone – even all the white people – were descended from a tribe. There was a time in their ancestry that they wore beads and feathers…” He makes the point that “what happened to them [losing the propensity to wear earth-based accoutrement], they’re now trying to do to us.”

Clint Eastwood recalls his 1976 classic THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES and his interaction with the mischievous Chief Dan George. (Thankfully, though he’s made some ignorant political choices in his old age, in his early films Eastwood would always go against the grain when it came to attitudes towards Natives, thereby affording them much more respect than his peers; the anti-John Wayne in more ways than one.)

Adam Beach, Sauteaux actor (the Native American Mark Ruffalo) comments on his “drunk Indian” role in Eastwood’s iconoclastic FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS (2006). We see him much younger in clips from Eyre’s groundbreaking film SMOKE SIGNALS (1998).

Iron Eyes Cody is revealed as the Sicilian he is. He was the “Indian” in the commercial with the single tear for the pollution. Entrenched in Hollywood as a Native actor, he was born Oscar de Corte and pathologically retained the identity of the Native even after his older visage shriveled to decidedly goombah. In interviews and public appearances, he kept maintaining he was Native! That jet-black wig on his septuagenarian features didn’t help. His old son has decided to retain that pathology. “I will defend my father’s honor!”

Uh, you do realize that defending an indefensible lie is exactly what the White Eyes have done for 120 years of American cinema?

END

The Sheepdog Cometh.

Clint Eastwood directs Bradley Cooper as AMERICAN SNIPER Chris Kyle in a heroic story about a decidedly unheroic slimeball.

They call Chris Kyle America’s Greatest Sniper, racking up over 160 confirmed kills over four tours in Iraq. Kyle, a Navy SEAL, who supposedly adheres to a much higher code of honor than us regular cucumbers, self-effacingly claims a much higher number. That’s the first of his many lies. (Firstly, why inflate the number? Kyle is portrayed as uncaring of how many people he kills (and how or why he kills them), just happy that “I was protecting my guys.” Secondly, is he trying to outdo war criminal George W Bush for Murderer of the Month in Mass Murderer’s Monthly? Thirdly, why are we lauding a killer anyway – specifically lauding him because he holds the highest kill tally? Oh, because the more enemies a person kills in WAR, the more “heroic” they are. Really? One word: Adolph. He killed even more people than Chris Kyle. For consistency, shouldn’t he be enshrined in American culture as well?) Just because you’re a SEAL doesn’t mean you’re a saint.

Poffy: American Snipee.

AMERICAN SNIPER, like THE HURT LOCKER, labors under the dichotomy of being an exceptionally well-produced movie, set amongst a damnably criminal war of choice (W’s pointless Fake War On Terror).

Military guys dressed like Iron Man sneak through Iraqi towns like cockroaches in packs, kicking down doors and terrorizing women and children with their big Amurrican dicks. There is no rationale, no soul searching, no doubt, no questions over what they do and why; it’s just USA-Good vs Iraq-Bad. A thin plot of them searching for clues to the whereabouts of a brutal Iraqi terrorist named The Butcher. And apparently kicking down civilian doors and torturing innocent residents is gonna net them answers. Empty, shallow, meaningless war for dummies, perpetrated by dummies doing the bidding of dummies. But it’s shot well, with excellent production values, lighting and acting, with an INCEPTION soundtrack. That doesn’t mean I’m not sick to death of seeing this visual of military bullies on patrol: ZERO DARK THIRTY, REDACTED, STOP-LOSS; reflected and glorified in video games for the military’s target recruitment demographic.

AMERICAN SNIPER is one montage pasted after another. Montage Kyle’s deer-hunting childhood, where his thick-necked father gives him and his brother advice on the three types of humans: sheep (who make up the majority), wolves (who bully the sheep) and sheepdogs (with an inbuilt desire to protect the sheep from the wolves), intimating that Kyle is the “type” compelled to protect the weak of the herd, his father telling him, “You’re gonna make a fine hunter some day.” Shyeh royt, his father said that. And lo, he becameth a hunter of men! The sheepdog speech is one of the most profound pieces of… bullshit you will ever hear. What was Pablo Picasso then? What was Mohammed Ali? What was Sigmund Freud? What is Arnold Schwarzenegger? Of course it makes perfect simpleton sense to a gun-totin’, belt-wielding, beer-rasslin’ Middle America redneck, and it serves to explain Chris Kyle’s “savior complex,” but it makes absolutely no sense in the real world. Yet despite Kyle being a supposed sheepdog (i.e. the “best of us”), he is portrayed as an anti-social loose cannon, a twitching hair-trigger ticking time-bomb incurious jackass. Who just loved murdering people.

This tale is meant to show us how war drives a wedge between society and this instinctive protector of innocents. But Chris Kyle couldn’t adjust to civilized society even if he wasn’t in war. He utterly neglected his family life, opting to go on tour time and again; he couldn’t hold down a regular job, and even in his youth, he neglected his sweet-ass trailer-trash girlfriend and, by her summation, he was also a terrible lay.

In America, that spells just one thing: Hero.

The movie draws from Kyle’s book, American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History (2012, with Jim DeFelice and Scott McEwen). Since its release, a court found that Kyle had fabricated an incident in the book (which he expanded on in TV interviews) involving ex-wrestler/ex-governor Jesse Ventura (awarding Ventura over $1.8 million). Now if Kyle lies about those big stories, imagine all the little details he might fabricate about the rest of his life, all while claiming that sniping per se did not mean much to him, that his nickname “Legend” was embarrassing, that he never counted his kills… in purveying humility, able to then claim bad-assery at every turn. In the book’s first pages, we realize what a dunderhead Kyle truly is – through his own words – as he claims he was fighting “savage, despicable evil” in Iraq; that his first kill (a woman allegedly holding a grenade) was “too blinded by evil” to consider innocent bystanders. Royt… so all those other fake reasons in the Pointless War On Terror didn’t register one jot with this patsy (oil, empire-building, stop them over there, 9-11, etc.) and his focus was on the evil. Did you even try to glean Clue One about the historical context of this conflict, drogue? Nope, they gave you a gun and sprayed a hose on you and now you’re the macho man arbiter of good and evil!

He writes, “I loved what I did” – and the Iraqi woman also loved killing; he was killing for God and country and – hey! So was she! If there’s a foreign occupation on American soil, let’s see how quickly you would blow them to hell, Chris. Put yourself in the head of that woman who is seeing AMERICAN TANKS ROLLING DOWN HER IRAQI STREET. Think on how brave she is for sacrificing her life for her fellow countrymen. Isn’t that what you would do, Hero?… There is none of this awareness in Kyle’s book or in the film. It’s a one-sided juggernaut of ignorance. Which is why this whole affair is so disappointing. America is honoring an incognizant empty vessel.

Montage Kyle’s rodeo days, his decision to join the military, bootcamp, where he is constantly sprayed with firehoses (which I’m becoming more certain is some kind of gay allegory), Meet Cute with future wife at a bar (where she vomits in the bushes from all the shots she downs, coincidentally while I was vomiting in my mouth from the gomer dialogue); courting at the fair, winning a big bear, marriage, call to arms…

Montage Tour One, and Kyle’s defining moment: his first kill – that Iraqi woman and a dramatic license young boy, created from whole cloth because – Hollywood. The decision Kyle makes to gun them both down is clinical, which is realistic (kudos to the filmmakers), because SEAL training (like astronaut training or cop training) is designed to leach the humanity out of you, to be able to perform your sociopathic job effectively without fear of conscience. But what should concern us is that the film concretizes what was merely conjecture. That is, what did the woman have in her hand? Kyle reports it as a grenade (his military drogue compatriots would concur to cover their own asses) – but was it? [YouTube comment, by Buck Rogers: “When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”]

Wife Taya (Sienna Miller, doppelganger for Lindsey Connell, Tracy on QUEER AS FOLK) starts bitching about his military service almost immediately. And doesn’t stop. “I need you home! When are you coming home! I’m making memories by myself! Even when you’re here, you’re not here!…” Considering he picked her up in a bar, which she specifically visited to get drunk and laid by a military guy, I’d say there are also some lost anecdotes and coverups from her angle. Kyle leaves this smokin’ tail home alone for four tours of Iraq and she wasn’t propositioned or cultivated once by military mongs whose only drives are murder, food and sex? I’m not buying it. Tour One, Kyle returned home to the clichéd reconciliation on the runway. By Tour Four, he just doesn’t call her when he’s back, opting to visit a bar for a few hours first. So that’s how Heroes treat their wives. I must remember to mention that in my lecture to schoolkids about heroism…

Montage Tours Two and Three lose focus, as the film’s unique dynamic is diluted when Kyle “decides” to leave his sniping post and join the troops on the ground because he can sheepdog them better at close range. Apparently, the military is so liberal, they just let you wander into whatever unit you feel suits you best. Good for them! You go, girls! Kyle partakes of the fun with the unthinking drogues kicking down doors and interrogating Iraqis. Apparently, the louder Kyle shouts in English, the more the Iraqis will understand him. Translation is just a case of volume.

Montage Tour Four and film restores its grim tone with Kyle back on the rooftops as Joe Cool. Firing at Iraqis who were trained by Imperial Stormtroopers, simply running out in the open and firing blindly.

AMERICAN SNIPER lacks a compelling hero – even though it is taken for granted by default that because Kyle is in the military he is automatically a hero. The protagonist in this film simply does a job that he is trained to – he does the job exceptionally well, we are told – then he returns home. The End. (By that criteria, let’s give a medal to the Burger King manager in Downtown LA, the guy who checks the hydraulics on the landing gear of international flights at JFK Airport, and the guy who doesn’t let any stock get stolen by gangbangers at the CVS pharmacy in Compton.) Kyle’s conflicts (his love of murder coupled with his bitching wife) are not grave enough to warrant a sizeable arc. And the actual enemy – as in the real war – is amorphous and unidentified. So Eastwood and screenwriter Jason Hall make up a nemesis for Kyle – an Iraqi sniper (Sammy Sheik) who was an Olympic shooter. Kyle’s final shot is against this other fearful sniper – a mile away, while under attack, during a sandstorm. Yes, and when *I* was a kid, I used to walk twelve miles to school without shoes, in the dark, in the snow.

Kyle’s resolution to finally go home is also dramatic license (why stop now?): we see his rifle, helmet and comm abandoned on Iraqi soil, slowly swallowed by the sandstorm; he has finally laid those ghosts to rest. Is that how it happened? Nah.

Buffed and buffooned Bradley Cooper has eschewed all the glitter and glam of previous roles (even his supposed “damaged” character in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK was just Phil from THE HANGOVER on better drugs) and battened down to basically play Clint Eastwood (don’t just do something – stand there) with a gomer Texan accent. A startling change of gears that finds him carrying the movie with a terse natural swagger, and it might just win him some little statues (if he can make it past the controversy of playing such a lying shithead).

I’m disappointed that a true Legend, Clint Eastwood, after an unparalleled career of hero and anti-hero roles, could not perceive that Chris Kyle was neither. Whereas Clint might have made this movie as yet another damnation against war, it is instead a pointless puff piece. Clint has always been a filmmaker who bravely took chances making hard statements: that sometimes death is more preferable than a broken life (MILLION DOLLAR BABY); that a man overboard in a military convoy will be left to drown despite all the rhetoric of No Man Left Behind (FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS), etc. The characters he played were avenging angels who knew right from wrong no matter the populist pc view or the law. And – surprisingly – he has always advocated for pacifism even through his most violent movies (THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES, LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, et al). Yet the confused old-man dementia that seeped into his 2012 Republican National Convention speech has at last infused his once-sober filmmaking. As he elevates an unworthy hero, by painting a pedestal under an unbalanced anti-social mug, he simultaneously dismantles his own hero mythos before our eyes.

“I was just protecting my guys. They were trying to kill our soldiers and I’m willing to meet my creator and answer for every shot that I took. The thing that haunts me are all the guys that I couldn’t save.”

The psychiatrist who hears these words puts Kyle in touch with guys who need saving Stateside… Kyle finds a calling as a mentor for wounded vets. (Vets? Is this something to do with that sheepdog thing?) Which would be his undoing. Four tours of Iraq and Kyle is killed in the United States – by another PTSD vet. [imdb comment by CGlMDB: “Death by irony.”]

Final title card: “Chris Kyle was killed that day by a veteran he was trying to help.” No details. (Apparently, as screenwriter Hall finished the first draft of the script, Kyle was murdered the very next day.) Cue actual footage of Kyle’s funeral procession, lined with admirers along the highway; his eulogy picture, his coffin, festooned with tributes from his fellow SEALs.

Goodbye, sheepdog.

END

Bad Moviemakers Strike Again.

There’s not much “revenge” in REVENGE OF THE CREATURE, except maybe the filmmakers’ revenge on clear-thinking movie viewers.

Scientists led by John Agar capture the CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON and bring him to civilization to “train” him. And kill him.

Called the “Gill Man” by the tourists and sightseers that call themselves “scientists,” the creature (played by Ricou Browning and Tom Hennesy) spends 90 percent of his onscreen time chained in a public aquarium, where he is shocked with a cattle prod by empathetic scientists in an attempt to make him open a pic-a-nic basket, and gawked on by rednecks. Then he escapes, crashes a swank party, grabs a girl – for the perfunctory photo op of “creature holding girl” – and is killed, using the same footage of him sinking under the water as they did in BLACK LAGOON.

Not once – not once – is there any intimation that maybe – just maybe – the Gill Man is killing people when he escapes because he’s out of his environment and trying to survive. There’s not even the cognizance that was barely discernible in KING KONG, that Man ripped the Gill Man from his natural home, thereby making him lash out instinctively.

But there is the insipid ugly love interest (Lori Nelson, theatrically overacting with her flat face), and the bicepped aquarium jock to create a love triangle; there’s the inherent sexism, racism, teenism that goes hand-in-hand with this filmmaking era; and there’s a baby-young Clint Eastwood attempting to act in a teeny tiny comedic role as a scientist’s assistant.

Slow-moving and unbearable due to emasculating the creature and removing all its danger and mystery, with an inane B-plot love farce between Agar and Nelson, it’s a, uh, fish out of water tale that drowns in the tank.

END

Trouble With The Script.

Hold up a mirror to Brad Pitt’s MONEYBALL, you get Clint Eastwood’s TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE.

MONEYBALL (2011) told us the best way to draft major league baseball players is to study their stats on a computer and not rely on the disdainful opinions of crotchety old men. TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE tells us that despite the stats on a computer, you should rely on the disdainful opinions of crotchety old men.

Eastwood is crotchety old baseball scout Gus (basically playing the same character from GRAN TORINO – that is, a retired Harry who doesn’t realize he ain’t Dirty no more), who is sent out by a league who is starting to doubt his skills, scouting a batter named Bo Gentry (Joe Massingill). His sight is failing, so his league manager and friend (John Goodman) appeals to Gus’s estranged lawyer daughter Mickey (Amy Adams) to accompany Gus on the trip, to help him out. As a young girl, Mickey was dragged around the country by Gus, viewing so many baseball games that she is quite the expert herself, with a love of the game that is belied by her bodily immersion in lawyering.

On the trip, they meet fellow scout Johnny (Justin Timberlake), sent by the league to keep an eye on old Gus. Dumb, clichéd romance ensues between Johnny and Mickey (although we all know the more believable romance would have been between Timberlake and Clint, as all men are bound by God and Nature to worship Clint Eastwood).

Trouble with the Cuke

Matthew Lillard is the league guy reliant on computer stats – and he’s made to look suitably ridiculous. That’s one complaint I have with the film as a whole: Randy Brown‘s screenplay paints each character in black and white, so that we know their fates from the outset. Lillard portrays a dork that stands by his statistics and wants to sign Bo Gentry, who has “trouble with the curve” ball – but Lillard will never see this reality by sitting at his computer screen. And Gentry comes off as a narcissistic asshole just aching to get signed for the money and the bitches. Let’s consult our PG-13 sports movie flow chart to see how Dork and Asshole fare in the final reel…

Also, consult flow chart for outcome of estranged daughter brought on road trip – ah yes, to reconcile with dad by the end. Captain Obvious been whispering in your ear, Randy?

Meanwhile, Johnny and Mickey take the requisite post-dinner evening walk through tree-lined streets with quaint stores, speaking softly and intimately. I… HATE this scene in movies! It’s shorthand for “new couple getting tentatively close” – but all men know the reality is actually a cultivation agenda that involves listening to her talk talk talk talk talk for hours about nothing, biding our time for Laying That Pipe. Consulting our PG-13 flow chart shows that Johnny and Mickey should follow this evening stroll with more stupid dialogue, maybe a non-naked swim in a night river, which leads to The Sex. Most movies portray The Sex with some slomo kissing silhouetted in front of curtains and maybe tasteful dark shots of a beast with two backs. But this movie cuts away after the non-naked swim. Fat chance we’ll see the rigorous pumping motions that sexual intercourse actually consists of, let alone Amy Adams’ fine porcelain plumpness. (I got no trouble with her curves at all.)

During their midnight swim, there is a sly baseball metaphor thrown in, as she tells Johnny to swim at a safe distance from her (because oh my gracious, how can a single girl trust the intentions of such a cad?). He swims closer and asks, “How’s this?” She replies, “Safe.” A little closer, “And this?” “Safe.” Just as we realize it’s a metaphor, we presume he’s stolen third base and sliding home. Underwater.

I am also uneasy with Eastwood falling back on his curmudgeon character too easily. I wish he didn’t feel like he was trapped in it. For the sake of his man-legacy, it seems as if this is Clint’s version of a “strong” character these days, or at least an obligation to the fans of his younger avenger characters. At that age, how naïve and pointless would one look if one were not cynical and mean-spirited? What’s an aging avenger to do?

We find that Gus’s meanness and his supposed “abandonment” of Mickey involve some wretchedly dark reasons. At one point, Gus says, “I’m just a broken down old man.” Wasn’t that Rourke’s exact line from THE WRESTLER? The subplot to humanize the curmudgeon – again, we see it coming a mile away.

And of course, the young pitcher they do end up signing is a nice quiet Mexican boy who doesn’t even realize how fast he can throw, and never got the shot because he was poor and blah blah – straight out of Screenwriting For Dummies.

TROUBLE is produced by Eastwood and directed by Robert Lorenz – and if you see many of Eastwood’s stylistic flourishes in this film, it’s because Lorenz has been Eastwood’s assistant director on innumerable Eastwood-directed films (ABSOLUTE POWER, TRUE CRIME, SPACE COWBOYS, including Oscar winner MILLION DOLLAR BABY).

Just one last baseball analogy: TROUBLE comes at us straight across home plate – no curveballs at all, just flat, straight pitches with predictable characters in predictable situations; no interesting plot developments, no irony, no twists, no real callbacks or payoffs.

Ironic that the movie itself has trouble with the curve.

END

Their eyes met across a crowded afterlife…

Ghost stories for the sensible.

HEREAFTER, produced and directed by Clint Eastwood, is a pondering of What’s Next from three very different human perspectives.

Clint Eastwood is at that age when we would all be inclined to ponder the possibility of a Hereafter, a Life after Death (by definition, an impossibility, but for many otherwise clear-thinking humans, this paradox makes all the sense in the world). Thankfully, Clint brings his thoughtful, storytelling mind to bear on this paradox (written by Peter Morgan) and crafts yet another of his magnificent movie monuments. When this moviemaking Prometheus eventually meets his Hereafter, there will be a tectonic shift in the world of movies, if not the world at large.

French Marie (Cecile De France) “dies” in a flash-tsunami and is revived, thence troubled by visions of some other dimension; a young British boy (Frankie McLaren) dies in an accident and helps his twin (George McLaren) from beyond; an authentic American psychic, George Lonegan (Matt Damon) whose brother (Jay Mohr) is trying to capitalize on his powers, tamps down his extra-sensory gifts, finding them a curse to leading a normal life and finding a normal love.

At first blush, HEREAFTER seems too eccentric a topic for a grounded filmmaker like Eastwood to tackle. Again, he surprises us, never delving so far into magic and supernatural that he loses everyone but the culties. At its heart, HEREAFTER is about ‘searching for answers.’ Ironically, it’s about lost souls. There’s even a little romance thrown in for girlies who wandered in by accident to see The Sexiest Man Alive mumble introspectively.

The movie reads so well because the moviemakers do not advocate any stance on whether ‘afterlife’ is real, connected to any deity, or the wild imaginings of desperate humanity; they do not offer answers either via rational experiment or irrational religion. The three characters are simply trying to live their lives, which have taken melancholy turns. Which fits the superstitious profile: most people would like to believe in a hereAFTER because they’re dissatisfied with the hereNOW.

Marie, once a rising, incitant newscaster, throws it all away to travel the world researching a book on her post-death experience; the little boy, who is taken from his alcoholic mother, cannot find peace with his foster parents, stealing money to travel the country and visit psychics whom he hopes can contact his dead twin; and George Lonegan takes a cooking course (with head chef Bobby Baccala!), meeting delectable Bryce Dallas Howard, and tries to make a delicious connection with her. Just as they partner up for a cooking contest, she is scared off by the discovery of his “powers.”

Dallas disappearing (and leaving Damon in the lurch without a cooking partner!) makes us realize that HEREAFTER is also about the eternal quest to ‘make connections’; connection with the other side, connection with other mortals who believe in the other side; connection between two people just trying to live life on this side. And then – another kind of connection, as the three separate stories spanning three countries (France, America and England) artfully weave into each other in London.

When Marie and George Lonegan meet, it is beautifully underplayed; it’s how people meet in real life (with another touching, recognizably Eastwood theme on the soundtrack!), and though they simply sit down to coffee in a streetside cafe, their “connection” is as electric as the climax to any action movie. What a majestic filmmaker!

What I want to know is: Did George ever win that cooking contest?

END

…like a woman scorned. And another… and another… and another…

Estrogen overload! Clint Eastwood fights for his life behind enemy lines! Yes, he’s trapped in a school full of women!

BEGUILED finds wounded Union soldier John McBurney (Eastwood) seeking refuge at a Confederate home for girls, led by spinster Martha (Geraldine Page), who, against her better judgment, tends to his wounds and allows him to recover in hiding in her girls’ home. And every female within sniffing distance – from 50-year-old Martha to the 19-year-old virgin, to the 16-year-old slut to the 10-year-old innocent – wants a piece o’ dat beef Clint-cake!

McBurney encourages every flirtation with that twinkle in his eye and a never-ending stream of compliments for all the women on his oh-so-kissable lips. Even the cynical black slave gets it into her head that she can take a bite outa that white meat.

Of course, McBurney is playing them all, planning to desert his regiment and sit out the war in their figurative and literal embrace.

Any other actor in the role of McBurney, this would have been a somber drama of obsession and womanly retribution. But because it’s Clint, it’s dangerously hilarious, as he spreads his man-musk with that Philo Beddoe charm. We always knew that anyone who could burn down so many men would be a master juggler of women.

McBurney’s constant stream of lies and false promises would be his undoing. He tells Martha he was wounded carrying an enemy soldier to safety, while in fact he was sniping; he promises to run away with No.19 (Elizabeth Hartman), then accepts the lecherous advances of No.16 (Jo Ann Harris); he promises innocent love to No.10 (Pamelyn Ferdin), then smashes her turtle against a wall. And when Martha’s fantasies of sliding her aged skin against that taut chest are dashed by discovering No.16 in his bed, it’s hell from so many angles at once that no man – not even The Man’s Man Clint – can withstand its emasculative fury.

The most amazing aspect of BEGUILED is that it’s filled with women and doesn’t get screechy or intolerable. Yet it is scarier than any horror movie with its castration allegory – for the sake of petty scorn. And never has an allusion to Michelangelo’s Pieta been so hot hot threesome hot.

There are no shots fired and no bombastic battle scenes, even though it’s set during the American Civil War. Revenge doesn’t have to be a mushroom cloud, it can just be… mushrooms…

From the novel by Thomas Cullinan, BEGUILED is a study in betrayal, and director Don Siegel not only paces it with a solid mix of tension, pathos and black humor, he fits the female cast perfectly to their roles – from Page’s yearning spinster (with a very dirty secret), to Hartman’s naive nineteen-year-old with the chaste romantic fantasies, to Harris’s teen slut with the upturned nose, upturned lips and upturned breasts. (I think we have a winner…)

END

Every president rapes. Only one is an Oscar winner.

Thieves in the Temple.

In ABSOLUTE POWER, Clint Eastwood is super thief Luther Whitney, robbing a mansion when he is interrupted by two lovers entering the room. Luther takes cover and witnesses rough foreplay, until the man gets too rough for the woman and she retaliates by trying to stab him.

The man, pinned on the floor, cries, “Help! Help!” and two Secret Service men shoot the woman (the glorious Melora Hardin) fatally from behind.

The man is the American President (Gene Hackman). Judy Davis (who always looks like she never got enough sleep) is Secretary of State, and as she and her Secret Service men clean the room, Luther makes a break for it. The Secret Service men (Dennis Haysbert and Scott Glenn) pursue him, but he eludes them. With a secret that could topple the presidency.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. ABSOLUTE POWER does not give us any ambiguity on how the American President is corrupt – he’s pretty much been handed the White House by his billionaire benefactor, Walter Sullivan (E.G. Marshall), the old man whose wife he just killed. And Hackman imbues the role with every ounce of contempt and duplicity that we know the actual President has for the American people whom he should be serving.

The Prince song Thieves in the Temple has nothing to do with politics, but these lines could very well be applied to The White House: “…Don’t care where they kick / Just as long as they hurt you / There are thieves in the temple tonight.” And we begin to realize that the actual “thieves” in our temples are not those simple robbers in our houses who steal money and jewels – the thieves are in the highest temples of power, CREATING the social disparities that CAUSE the robbers in our houses.

Ed Harris is police detective Seth Frank, misdirected off the murder scent by the cover up of the White House criminals; hot on the trail of Luther, but unable to prove anything. Besides, he’s hot on the TAIL of Luther’s estranged daughter Kate (Laura Linney), who is a trial lawyer, so he is stuck between a rock (the presidency responsible for murder – heaven forbid!) and a hard place (his pants). Once again demonstrating how real criminals (those in positions of sociological power) misdirect blame downwards. The thief becomes the focus of derision rather than the actual murderers.

Remember that bandit mouse from the Klondike Kat cartoon? “Savoir Fare is everywhere!” That’s Luther. His daughter comes home with Seth – Luther is there; Seth is brushing his teeth – Luther is there; Sullivan gets into his town car – Luther is there. In a career of subdued roles, Eastwood directs himself in one of the most subdued, seemingly behind the scenes of the plot itself.

While attempting to capture Luther, Scott Glenn and Ed Harris are paired up; though they are strangers from two rival departments at odds with each other, there is a nagging familiarity about them being onscreen together…Of course! These guys were astronaut pals in the Mercury 7 program in THE RIGHT STUFF!

On the president’s orders, the Secret Service go after Luther and his daughter. But Luther is there! In one of the most satisfying scenes of mercilessness Eastwood has ever performed: Secret Serviceman Colin (Haysbert) sneaks up on Kate in a hospital bed, with a lethal injection. From behind, Luther grabs Colin, puts a needle to his neck, warning him that a small dose will fry his brain, adding, “You went after my little girl – and that’s entirely unacceptable!” (From that day, I began using the phrase “Entirely Unacceptable” to people who let me down and you have no idea how powerful an indictment it is!). Colin pleads with Luther, “Mercy.” Luther replies, “I’m fresh out,” and pushes the needle’s plunger. (Stabbing those who let you down in the neck with a hypodermic needle is also pretty satisfying, but, like Dave Chappelle, I plead The Fif on that one.)

ABSOLUTE POWER is not “political” and makes no sociological statements. If anything, it underscores how the American president should be answerable for the crimes he commits – and we should already know that! In a more subtle way than usual, ABSOLUTE POWER shows us that Clint still has The Right Stuff. Though his character is a thief, he manages to retain the avenger idiom of his best anti-heroes and rights a wrong quite decisively. And takes down the President of the United States.

Now that’s absolute power.

END

Justice is DIRTY.

You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?
— Harry Callahan, DIRTY HARRY.

And a screen icon is scarred onto the face of filmdom. And the Earth is once again salted with the man-nectar of masculinity.

DIRTY HARRY is about a cop who takes the law into his own hands. That’s the simple synopsis. But the cultural impact of this film and Clint Eastwood’s most enduring character is indescribable.

Beyond the art of movies, beyond the rubric of cops and robbers, beyond the playground where good and evil frolic hand in hand, “Dirty Harry” has entered the lexicon as shorthand for righteous brutality, masculine justice, and not taking shit; the film DIRTY HARRY spawned innumerable “loose cannon” cop films (which was a misapprehension of its actual theme), a more disturbing level of violence in movies and a new psychopathic angle on that violence; DIRTY HARRY took the anti-authority hippie stance of the 60s to the next level of societal angst in the newly-minted ’70s.

Amidst the furor over an unwinnable war (times just don’t change, do they?) American aggression found catharsis in DIRTY HARRY. Simplistically, the movie advocates violence against those who spawn violence (two wrongs making a right), seemingly advocating personal vigilantism over the dinosaurian “justice system”; yet the real message was too subtle for American audiences, who prove themselves time and again too blunt to comprehend subtlety. As Clint himself espouses, “It’s not about a man who stands for violence. It’s about a man who can’t understand society tolerating violence.”

And Clint Eastwood should know. He IS Dirty Harry.

In a role intended for Sinatra (who would have merely filed it with his cavalcade of roles as arrogant guys with tilted hats) Eastwood owned Detective Harry Callahan like Sinatra owned My Way.

After we meet alpha male Harry as an edgy maverick San Francisco cop who “doesn’t play any favorites! Harry hates everybody: Limeys, Micks, Hebes, Fat Dagos, Niggers, Honkies, Chinks, you name it,” he is teamed with a young Mexican Inspector, Chico (Reni Santoni) and soon on the trail of a psycho sniper killer, Scorpio (Andy Robinson, who would never again command a role so hallucinogenically ruthless and sassy).

The subtext is that Scorpio is Harry on the wrong side of the law (As Above, So Below; Demon est Deus Inversus, the devil is god inverted). He hates minorities too and demands a ransom from the city of San Francisco in return for not shooting a homosexual or a catholic priest (nowadays that’s the same thing). In a plotline that predates Jack Bauer’s “ticking clock” scenario, Scorpio buries a young girl alive and Harry must find her before her oxygen runs out – and resorts to torture, Dick Cheney style (while in real life, Cheney was skulking the halls of the White House as a Nixon aide, probably taking notes when Harry steps on Scorpio’s wounded leg to make him talk…).

There are the authority figures stultifying Harry’s methods, then castigating him with legal technicalities when he gets the job done (John Vernon as the Mayor and Josef Sommer as the D.A.). And there is the first pairing of Eastwood with the ever-frazzled Harry Guardino as his Lieutenant.

Filthy Poffy

Reviewer Pauline Kael finds in DIRTY HARRY “the fairytale appeal of fascist medievalism.” And author Richard Schickel defines that moment a star becomes a superstar – the scene that establishes why Harry is Dirty, shooting down bank robbers while still chewing a hot dog.

From a diner, Harry spies a car idling outside a bank. Not wanting to interrupt his break, he instructs the chef to call in a robbery in progress. As Harry takes the first bite of his hot dog, alarms start clamoring, and he resignedly drops the dog and exits the diner, still chewing on the bite. And drawing his big, big gun. He sees an armed robber exiting the bank (Albert Popwell in the first of his four roles in Dirty Harry movies) and yells, “Halt!” mid-chew. The robber fires on Harry; Harry fires back, sending the robber sprawling. The getaway car careens at Harry, who calmly takes aim and shoots it, sending it crashing into a fire hydrant, which jets water like a carnival.

And now, the pièce de résistance: Harry saunters to the downed robber – still chewing – and calmly points his gun at him, the robber looking tentatively at his own gun on the ground, inches from him. And Harry speaks, sardonically, amused:

I know what you’re thinking. ‘Did he fire six shots or only five?’ Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?

The milk of Legend.

The robber declines the challenge, yet when Harry turns to walk away, the robber beseeches him, “Hey!… I gots to know.” The milk of hilarity. By now Harry has morphed into a composite of Clint/Harry, as he smugly points his Magnum at the flinching robber – and pulls the trigger! Click! Empty barrels! Harry smiles that Eastwood smile and saunters away.

By now we are overdosing on Legend…

While his mythos as a laconic avenger was birthed with Leone’s DOLLAR trilogy, the DIRTY HARRY movies rounded out this more “modern” Clint. And if Leone was responsible for carving Clint into Legend, the director of this cinematic juggernaut was the other man who “made” Eastwood: Don Siegel. (Credit also to the writers, who put those tasty words in Harry’s mouth: Harry Julian Fink, Rita M. Fink, Dean Riesner, John Milius, Jo Heims.)

Alfred Hitchcock gets so much credit for that scene in DIAL M FOR MURDER, where we see the gleam of the scissors before the stab, but let’s give a little sugar to Siegel: as we see Scorpio tumble down a hill with a knife in his thigh, on the final tumble, the knifed leg cartwheels upwards giving a shattering view of the knife sticking out of it. And there are the magnificent Don Siegel camera pullbacks, which Clint would incorporate into his own directorial style. Usually used at the end of movies, to encompass the larger canvas where the story played out, Siegel gives us one of these pullbacks midway, as Harry steps on Scorpio’s thigh in the middle of a football field. Two lone figures – pullback – a bare, floodlit field – pullback – even the field fades into the black night amidst Scorpio’s screams.

Harry’s superiors hit the roof, “Where does it say you’ve got the right to kick down doors, torture suspects, deny medical attention and legal counsel?” (Does he think he’s Dick Cheney or something? Hmm, Dirty Dick. How would that wash?) Harry simply keeps his cool and makes a snide comment before he exits every scene. Was this where the snide exit-stinger was invented?

The finale is the cement that hardens the Legend. Harry points his Magnum at Scorpio, who is shielding himself with a boy. In a classic callback, Harry recites the same monolog he gave to the bank robber – but this time the tone is taut disdain, a mocking death knell for the person whom it is addressed to. And the funny thing is: during Harry’s first speech, he is out of ammo, during his second, he has one bullet left – yet the circumstances make him a winner both times.

DIRTY HARRY is sometimes considered a treatise on the moral ambiguity of the American justice system, or the moral ambiguity of those within it. Which is exactly wrong! Firstly, “justice” has nothing to do with the law. The so-called “American justice system” is a euphemism for the convoluted revenue-collection machinery of federal and state law. As for the erroneous view that Harry Callahan is morally ambiguous because he chooses to go against the letter of the law, well, his actions only prove that he is the only person in the movie with a moral compass, adrift in an amoral sea of red-tape junkies. Like all of us, he has an innate understanding of right and wrong, and shows it – in a job where it is discouraged.

Harry’s innate sense of principles make him overqualified to be a police detective, but because he is this film’s anti-hero, we erroneously start believing all cops possess such a moral compass, when we should be aware that real life cops are never allowed any such discernment, being mere apprehenders or indirect revenue-collection cogs.

In Clint’s Magnum opus we know that Harry Callahan stands for what is truly right – over and above any written law cravenly passed by sniveling old rich white guys who rape justice in the ass. We identify with Harry Callahan because we ALL know what’s really wrong and really right. When you yourself come up against morally ambiguous situations in life, you don’t refer to those pasty old guys out of touch with real life, you look to someone like Harry Callahan to guide you. And you gotta ask yourself a question, “Do you feel Dirty?”

Well, do ya, punk?!

END

“Y’know, nothin’ goes better with killin’ Mexicans than an ice-cold Corona.”

Totally Kidd-ing.

There are a lot of interesting things about JOE KIDD, the least being the movie itself.

This is Clint Eastwood at the peak of his early stardom: ruggedly handsome, aquiline nose, velvet rasp, thick shock of dirty blonde receding hair, three-day growth to emulate Leone’s Italian spaghettis that made him famous, wisecracking and head-cracking all over the New Mexico desert. He is a towering presence in the movie, that without him, would be as unimaginative and confused as the people who cast John Saxon as a Mexican.

Saxon is revolutionary leader Luis Chama, who storms a courthouse with his tryhard Spanish and (real Mexican) henchmen in the small town of Sinola, New Mexico, and burns land deeds owned by white prospectors in front of a judge, proclaiming “his people” are taking back land that rightfully belongs to them.

Land owner Frank Harlan (Robert Duvall) and his posse of professional shooters come gunning for Chama, hiring Joe Kidd (Eastwood) to track Chama. It’s written by legend Elmore Leonard and directed by legend John Sturges (THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, THE GREAT ESCAPE), yet Kidd’s motivation and the plot play out very inartfully.

We can’t figure whether Kidd is in it for the money or because Chama’s men tied one of his ranchhands to a fence with some barbed wire for no reason. We can’t figure why Harlan would hire Kidd, then fire him and lump him in with Mexican hostages. We can’t figure why Harlan threatens to kill five hostages at a time until Chama surrenders to him, yet lets his most dangerous hostage – Kidd – stay alive to take down all his henchmen through the cunning use of Being Clint Eastwood.

And worst of all, we can’t figure the diluted revolutionary message. At first, Chama is righteously struggling for land reform, ruthless in his principles: “It doesn’t matter how many of these villagers die as long as the revolution succeeds!” Yet by the end, Kidd convinces Chama to take his grievances to court for “a fair trial.” That would be the same crooked American courts that granted land deeds to white folk over the rightful ownership of indigenous peoples. I’m sure the courts would grant Chama leniency after his insurrection and failed land takeover.

Though Chama is originally painted as a Che Guevara-type, this is a fantasy resolution that only White America could conceive; that all its indigenous peoples behave this way. On AMERICA’S terms.

• In JOE KIDD, Clint Eastwood is back in the saddle after directing his first feature, PLAY MISTY FOR ME (1971) and spawning his enduring anti-hero DIRTY HARRY (1971).
• Clint’s role as hired hand playing both sides of a range war reminds us of his breakout role in Sergio Leone’s FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964).
• Big Gregory Walcott co-stars as a deputy; seems to only exist in Eastwood movies to get his ass kicked by Eastwood (in RAWHIDE, THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT, THE EIGER SANCTION, EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE).

For Clint fans, this film is a monumental example of Eastwood doing all those outlandish things only Clint can get away with in a Clint Eastwood movie; the types of things that make schoolboys grow up idolizing the laconic, lanky super cowboy:

• After a fellow prisoner mocks Kidd, the prisoner is dispatched by Kidd, not with a gun to the face – a saucepan.
• In a scene reminiscent of DIRTY HARRY chewing on a hotdog whilst shooting burglars, Kidd calmly guns down an assailant without even looking at him, but rather, down at the beer he raises to his lips.
• Kidd walks into a strange blonde’s room (who looks decidedly like scrawny Sondra Locke) and makes out with her after merely two minutes of flirting. She asks, “How long were you in jail?” Kidd: “Two days.” She: “What would you be like if you’d been in there two months?” Kidd: “We wouldn’t even be talking now.”
• When one of Harlan’s pro gunmen challenges Kidd to a duel, forcing Kidd to use only second-rate Mexican guns, Kidd picks up a second-rate Mexican gun – and clobbers the pro gunman with its butt.
• And then there is pure Eastwood bombast – in the final climactic scene, Joe Kidd runs a railroad engine through a saloon for the final shootout.

You gotta be kidding! No he ain’t. “Want some more?”

END