Bullets over Fraud Way. Clint Eastwood takes the bus to work. THE GAUNTLET is a ludicrous, riotous, guilty pleasure, Eastwood at the helm as director and star, doing all those outlandish things only Clint Eastwood can get away with in a Clint Eastwood Movie. Clint is Ben Shockley (cool name, huh?), a hard-drinking, unreliable Phoenix cop, who must escort “a … Read More
ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN
ANY WHICH WAY is a “Right Turn, Clyde!” “Right turn, Clyde!” – and the orangutan’s fist shoots out the passenger window, impacting anyone dumb enough to have their face there. It’s just one of many running gags in this inexplicable, fuzzy film. ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN (sequel to EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE) opens with an illegal street fight, … Read More
HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER
High Pains Grifter. John Wayne didn’t like HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER and let me know it. He wrote me a letter putting it down, saying it was not The West. I was trying to get away from what he and Gary Cooper and others had done. — Clint Eastwood. Dee Barton’s ominous score heralds an angel of death materializing from the … Read More
EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE
American Knuckle Sandwich. A street fighter. A love story. An ape. Disguised as a simplistic road story, EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE is a paean to freedom; freedom from the strictures of routine, freedom to settle disputes like a man (If the problem can’t be fixed with a fist or a monkey wrench, it ain’t worth fixin’), freedom to fight … Read More