The Screengrab : dirty harry

Trailer Review: Gran Torino

Paul Clark — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

The movies that Clint Eastwood directs are a lot like his performances- lean, wiry, but with a certain softness that belies the gruff exterior. And while I suppose a small part of me is a tad let down that this isn’t another chapter in the Dirty Harry saga, I like that Gran Torino seems to give Eastwood another of his patented no-bullshit roles, only in the context of his more recent “golden years” stories. While in the past he was prone to canoodling onscreen with women half his age, he’s made no bones about his own, and it’s sort of awe-inspiring to consider him kicking ass like he did thirty years ago without looking stupid while doing it. Of course, there will be plenty out there who are curious about Gran Torino’s Oscar chances, and while this doesn’t look on the surface like an Oscar-bait movie, neither did Million Dollar Baby, and look how well that turned out. So watch out, Awards Season competition- Clint wants you to get off his lawn.

It’s a Lebowski World, We Just Abide in It

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:00:00 GMT

The Coen Brothers won a heap of Oscars earlier this year, their new movie is due in theaters tomorrow, and yet it’s still pretty much all Lebowski, all the time. The movie has just been released on DVD for the third time. (I’ve got the original bare bones edition purchased by those happy few of us who were in on the ground floor of this thing, but that’s since been supplanted by the 2005 “collector’s edition” and the new 10th anniversary version, which also comes in a specially packaged bowling ball edition.) Lebowski Fest, the celebration of bowling, White Russians and what-have-you that began in Louisville, Kentucky in 2002 has now expanded to multiple locations: the San Francisco edition took place earlier this month and the New York version is set for November.

Since this is an election year, we even have some pontification on the politics of The Big Lebowski. According to this Slate piece, the “Is this your homework, Larry?” sequence “if filmed today, would almost certainly be taken as an allegory about the younger Bush's war. The police have recovered the car, and the Dude has found, wedged between the seats, a page of homework belonging to one Larry Sellers. Walter figures out Larry's address and arrives at his house, the Dude in tow, the homework in a plastic bag… When Larry says nothing, Walter proceeds to Plan B: destroying the new Corvette parked outside—purchased, he assumes, using the money left in the car—with a crowbar. Actually, though, the Corvette belongs to a neighbor. Neocons everywhere can sympathize.”

Rolling Stone attempts to get to the bottom of Lebowski-mania with a cornucopia of 10th anniversary articles and interviews. “Today, as technology increasingly handcuffs us to schedules and appointments — in the time it takes you to read this, you've missed three e-mails — there's something comforting about a fortysomething character who will blow an evening lying in the bathtub, getting high and listening to an audiotape of whale songs. He's not a 21st-century man. Nor is he Iron Man — and he's certainly not Batman. The Dude doesn't care about a job, a salary, a 401(k), and definitely not an iPhone. The Dude just is, and he's happy.” Or as John Milius, one model for Walter Sobchak puts it, “The Dude is like Dirty Harry…Dirty Harry became a movement. And the Dude became a movement. It's symbolic of a whole way of life.” Well, at least it’s an ethos.

And remember, this is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps:

Related:
The Dude Abides: Ten Years of "Lebowski"
"Almost an Evening" with Ethan Coen

Clint Eastwood Would Like Spike Lee to Shut His Face

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Publicizing the new box set of Dirty Harry DVDs, Clint Eastwood took the opportunity to respond to Spike Lee’s comments from the Cannes Film Festival. As you’ll recall, Lee took issue with Eastwood’s two-part World War II film, specifically the paucity of black faces in Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. “Clint Eastwood made two films about Iwo Jima that ran for more than four hours total and there was not one Negro actor on the screen," Lee told reporters. "If you reporters had any balls you'd ask him why. There's no way I know why he did that -- that was his vision, not mine. But I know it was pointed out to him and that he could have changed it. It's not like he didn't know.”

This isn’t the first time Lee has gotten all up in Eastwood’s grill. “"He was complaining when I did Bird [the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker],” Eastwood tells The Guardian. “Why would a white guy be doing that? I was the only guy who made it, that's why. He could have gone ahead and made it. Instead he was making something else.”

Eastwood realizes there was a “small detachment” of Negro soldiers on Iwa Jima, but in his words, “they didn't raise the flag. The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn't do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people'd go, 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate.” He sums up the Miracle at St. Anna director succinctly: “A guy like him should shut his face.”

With that out of the way, Eastwood is free to talk Dirty Harry, and to clear up those rumors that he’s taking the character out for one more spin in the upcoming Gran Torino. “Some idiot came up with some theory…Not at my age,” he stresses. “There are certain age limits on police officers. They'd have retired me out at 65.”

Related:
Spike Lee Blasts Clint Eastwood, Coen Brothers
Under the Hood of Eastwood's "Gran Torino"

The Albert Popwell Collection

Phil Nugent — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:00:00 GMT

The release this week of all five "Dirty Harry" movies starring Clint Eastwood on DVD and Blu-ray gives fans the chance to settle in for a long weekend spent admiring the charismatic intensity and skillful range of a familiar but sometimes underappreciated American actor--Albert Popwell. Popwell, who died in 1999, goes way back in the Dirty Harry franchise: he has a small role as a hippie in the movie that many see as a precursor to the Harry Callahan character (as it was molded by Eastwood and director Don Siegel in the 1971 Dirty Harry) and TV's McCloud to boot: the 1968 Coogan's Bluff. In that film, the first collaboration between Siegel and Eastwood--they'd later team up for The Beguiled, Two Mules for Sister Sara, and Escape from Acatraz--Eastwood plays a shitkicker cop from Arizona who hits New York City at the height of the counterculture era to track down an escaped hood and inspires everyone's reluctant admiration for the effectiveness of his uncivilized approach enforcement. Popwell would go on to appear in a small but key role in Dirty Harry and return, in a different role each time, in the first three of its four sequels. Grady Hendrix recently noted that Popwell "twice the actor Mr. Eastwood is in the series;" his repeat appearances also serve as a handy guide to what possibilities were open--and closed--to talented African-American character actors in movies of the period. (I don't necessarily mean to imply that things have changed a whole hell of a lot.)

In Dirty Harry, Popwell has perhaps the movie's most memorable scene, albeit one that he has to spend lying on the sidewalk with a gun in his face. He plays the survivor of a bank robbery that interrupts Harry's lunch. A crackerjack action set piece peerlessly directed by Siegel in his knuckle-cracking prime, it establishes Harry's unearthly cool and mastery of the violent approach to crime-solving; he figures out what's going from one look at the getaway car and proceeds to foil the robbers by shooting their car. He then proceeds to fake out Popwell, who's lying within reach of his gun, by taunting him with the famous speech about just what Harry's gun could do to him if he had any bullets left, which he may or may not--"Do you feel lucky?" After backing down, Popwell calls out to the departing Harry in raspy-voiced desperation--"I gots to know" he says, with as much dignity as imaginable under the circumstances--and Harry points the gun in his face, pulls the trigger--click!--then walks away chuckling. The audience is meant to cheer Harry for not only defeating the fallen criminal but messing with his head and rubbing his face in it, and most of them do cheer, but Siegel's inclusion of a small grace note--a close-up of Popwell muttering, "Son of a bitch" as Harry walks away--can perhaps be taken as the director's covert acknowledgment that, for all his bitching and moaning about the things he's forced to do to compensate for the ineffectual lily-livered politicians and other liberals who would shackle the lawgiver, there's a big part of Harry that enjoys his job way too much.

There are no such grace notes in Popwell's flashy, repulsive scene in 1973's Magnum Force; he plays a pimp who brutally murders a hooker. But by then, grace notes in the "Dirty Harry" franchise were already getting to be few and far between. (Magnum Force is itself conceived as a raised middle finger to those who criticized the first film as a reactionary endorsement of vigilante police power. It pits craggy old Harry against a secret police death squad consisting of fresh-faced young up-and-comers--Robert Urich, Tim Matheson, David Soul--and their fearless leader, Hal Holbrook.) In 1976's The Enforcer, made in the wake of the SLA kidnapping of Patricia Hearst and other manifestions of the last insane, dying ripples of "revolutionary" counterculture politics, Popwell turns up as "Mustapha", a troubled-looking black militant who slips Harry some information that will help him bring down the "People's Revolutionary Strike Force", a bunch of pimps and hookers posing as a terrorist cell. (Like the Mothers of Invention, they're only in it for the money.) However we're meant to view his character, he does again manage to suggest a much deeper and more complicated range of thought and emotion than Harry. Popwell made the full jump to good guy in 1983's Sudden Impact, the only film in the series directed by Eastwood himself. By now, the tensions of the sixties are fully submerged and the movie is in total action-cartoon mode. There isn't much Popwell can do to leaven it, but he does get more screen time than ever before. He plays Harry's partner, which is the series equivalent to being the drummer in Spinal Tap. It is a role traditionally assigned to representatives of "minority groups", such as the Hispanic rookie detective played by Reni Santoni in Dirty Harry and the woman cop played by Tyne Daly in The Enforcer, so that Harry can show that for all his angry-white-male bluster, he can respect and work with the unwhite and the unmale when they prove to him that they have the right stuff. Paradoxically, they invariably prove it by getting taken out of the action by getting injured or killed, so that Harry can also show that only he is tough enough to single-handedly prevail in the end. Popwell's role does not break the cycle.

Popwell's career was hardly limited to his association with Clint Eastwood. He was a very active presence in TV, appeared in Siegel's Charley Varrick, and left a fond impression among fans of family-blacksploitation films with his role as Matthew Johnson, who, with his brother Melvin (Caro Kenyatta), lent their martial-arts skills to the efforts to keep heroin out of the neighborhood in two films starring the late Tamara Dobson as the amazon avenger Cleopatra Jones. But he deserves to be remembered for being to Dirty Harry what Frankie Faisan has been to Hannibal Lector. Faison, it will be remembered, appeared in all the movies featuring everyone's favorite cannibal psychiatrist--Manhunter, The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, and Red Dragon--up until the more recent and less successful Hannibal Rising. It would be nice to surmise that Popwell's absence from the last Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool, was closely connected to that film's disappointing returns, but it did have, mmmmmmmmmmm, other problems. Eastwood himself was 58 at the time, and the appearance of this box set, twenty years later, can probably be taken as a declaration, should anyone have been in doubt about it before now, that we have indeed seen the last of Harry Callahan and his big phallic killing device. Eastwood may not be the master filmmaker and great actor that a number of critics have insisted on taking him for in his dotage, but, give him a little credit: he's less shameless than Sylvester Stallone.

DVD Digest for June 3, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:00:00 GMT

With Father’s Day coming in less than two weeks, the studios begin to unveil their snazzy new editions of what TNT used to call “movies for guys who like movies.” We’ve got all the manly movies you need to keep dad happy while mom and her friends are out seeing the Sex and the City movie (seriously, how did we not see that coming?).

Before Clint Eastwood became known as an Academy Award-winning filmmaker (or a guy who co-starred with an orangutan) he was first and foremost a grimacing badass. And while some- including yours truly- have a soft spot for his Man With No Name trilogy- the most enduring character from this period would also certainly be “Dirty” Harry Callahan. This week, Warner unveils new DVD and Blu-Ray editions of all five of Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films, featuring all of the features from previous DVD editions plus a number of new ones. Most notably, Warner Brothers’ box set (the films are also sold separately) includes a new feature-length documentary, Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows. In addition, the memorabilia included in the box set includes a 40-page hardcover book and a map of San Francisco detailing Harry’s hunt for Scorpio.

But if dad’s looking for wartime heroism (Blu-Ray only), MGM and Fox both have something that’ll fit the bill. MGM will unveil Blu-Ray editions of A Bridge Too Far and Battle of Britain this week, although these new discs will contain no special features. So if it’s tricked out Blu-Rays (and better movies) you want, go with Fox’s war DVDs. The studio will be releasing three of its classics- Patton, The Longest Day and The Sand Pebbles- exclusively on Blu-Ray, packed with special features and all the bells and whistles he could ever hope for.

But that’s not all, folks. If dad wants some laughs with his testosterone, buy him the new City Slickers: Collector’s Edition (MGM), which gives him some Western action, male bonding humor courtesy of Crystal, Kirby and Stern, and of course Jack Palance, who even in death can still crap bigger than you. Other, more recent dudely comedies releasing this week include Semi-Pro (New Line, also Blu-Ray), Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show (Lionsgate), and for the father whose enjoyment of movies far outweighs his taste, Meet the Spartans (Fox, also Blu-Ray). And what’s a list of guy movies with James Bond? Sony will release a new three-disc edition of Casino Royale, Bond’s best big-screen adventure since the sixties (there, I said it).

Other new releases this week include: Anton Corbijn’s Ian Curtis biopic Control (Weinstein Company); the Jessica Alba remake of The Eye (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray); Michael Caine and Demi Moore in Flawless (Magnolia); the long-delayed The Onion Movie (Fox); and Asia Argento just the way we like her (i.e. mostly naked and toting a gun) in Olivier Assayas’ Boarding Gate (Magnolia). The week’s most notable non-guy-movie old-school release is Jean-Jacques Beineix’s seminal Cinema du look classic Diva (Lionsgate). Finally, releasing on Blu-Ray only: Cloverfield (Paramount), Signs (Buena Vista), The Recruit (Buena Vista), There Will Be Blood (Paramount).

OST: "Enter the Dragon"

Leonard Pierce — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:30:00 GMT

More than any other decade of the 20th century, the 1970s get a bad rap. Unfairly judged by the worst of its excess and constantly degraded by shorthand stereotypes, the seventies have come to mean cheesy, tacky, and pre-fab -- the very worst of American popular culture. It's really hard to figure out why this should be so; both high and low culture were extremely well-served by the years from 1971 to 1980. If people want to judge the whole era by "HONK IF YOU'RE HORNY" bumper stickers, avocado-green refrigerators, and the collected lyrics of Rupert Holmes, that's their own lookout -- the rest of us can enjoy one of the richest periods in all of American film, as well as the ascendant periods of funk and jazz fusion and the arrival on American shores of the high-energy cinematic candy known as chop-socky.

Those characteristics all came together on the soundtrack to Bruce Lee's first American-produced martial arts film, the legendary Enter the Dragon. The movie itself, while lacking some of the more elegant formal qualities of other great films of the decade, features some classic setpieces and wall-to-wall dynamite in the action sequences. Lee had never looked more invincible, and some of his demonstrations of his style of jeet kune do are still breathtaking 35 years after the movie's release. When it came time to commission a soundtrack, producer Fred Weintraub brought in longtime pro Lalo Schifrin to do the job. A classically trained Argentine who was already well-established as a highly skilled jazz pianist when he came to Hollywood in the late 1950s, he wrote some of the most memorably TV themes of the following decade before shifting to the big screen. He'd just made a big splash in the business in 1971 by penning the theme music to his friend Clint Eastwood's megahit Dirty Harry, and Enter the Dragon was meant to be little more than an easy paycheck between projects. For some reason, though, Schifrin chose to really pull out the stops on the Bruce Lee vehicle; working with an ad hoc mini-orchestra equally comprised of Warner Brothers studio pros and hot session jazz musicians, the soundtrack is a wonderful, energetic, thrilling, sometimes dirty but never trashy thrill-ride that combines classical cinematic sting with some incredible jazz and funk overtones that are prominent from the very first notes. Schifrin peppers the score with pseudo-'traditional' Asian music cues, but their transparent bogosity never overwhelms the propulsive soundtrack to the point where they become cheesy; they're just loud little splashes of color on a vibrant canvas of sound.

BEST TRACKS: The album's opening track -- "Theme from Enter the Dragon" -- is an absolute smash, a stunning blend of action-movie symphonic flash with deep-funk guitars and wickedly played funk guitar and organ. It's a testament to its quality that it's been endlessly sampled in hip-hop songs (most recently in the De La Soul comeback hit "Ooooh"). That piece sets the tone, but there's plenty more to love here: "Bamboo Birdcage" lulls the listener in with quiet, thoughtful reeds and woodwinds only to blast out highly funky horn shots when they're most effective; and "The Big Battle" serves almost as an overture -- though it appears near the end of the film -- with its jazzy, improvisational riffing on several major themes from other tracks, punctuated by dynamic stings and carried by a monster funk bassline.

Yesterday's Hits: Billy Jack (1971, "T.C. Frank")

Paul Clark — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:00:00 GMT

The late 1960s and early 1970s were a time of great turmoil in the U.S. The younger generation’s opposition to the Vietnam War stirred up a number of social and political movements, some nonviolent, some violent, and the establishment responded to these movements with force. Liberals hoped to affect change in the country, while conservatives despaired that the government wasn’t doing enough to get the situation under control. This unrest, and the fear it bred, was reflected in the rise of vigilante films in the early seventies. Most of these films had a right-wing bent, with the heroes of movies like Death Wish, Dirty Harry and Joe standing up to the criminals and “the freaks.” But who would stand up to the government and protect the peace-loving people from the powers that be?

What made Billy Jack a hit?: Tom Laughlin, a veteran of numerous B-movies and television shows, originated the character of Billy Jack in the 1967 biker movie Born Losers, in which he defended a small town against a dangerous biker gang. But while Born Losers was a straightforward biker flick, Laughlin had other plans for the Billy Jack. 1971’s Billy Jack saw the character transformed into a kind of folk hero, a half-breed outsider who defends the experimental “Freedom School” against the racist, corrupt townspeople who threaten its existence.

Billy Jack is a textbook case of a film that seems to have a political bent but appeals to many different ideologies. In addition to his efforts to protect the Freedom School, Billy Jack also believes in the sanctity of Native American culture and the importance of protecting animals and the environment. Likewise, the former Green Beret opposes the Vietnam War. Billy Jack is full of political speeches and songs to appeal to this audience. However, it also contains its fair share of ass-kicking for those who are so inclined. Billy Jack doesn’t share the peaceful inclinations of Jean (Delores Taylor, Laughlin’s real-life wife), dean of the Freedom School, and her students. He’s not above administering a beat-down to those who get on his bad side.

But what gives the story universal appeal is that Billy Jack is all about standing up for those who can’t defend themselves. Laughlin, who directs the film under the pseudonym “T.C. Frank” paints the Freedom School students as innocents and the townspeople as irredeemably evil, racist thugs, so it’s hard to imagine anyone on either end of the political spectrum identifying with the villains here. In painting both his supporting characters in such broad strokes, he makes the film a simple good vs. evil story, with the bonus of tapping into the quintessentially American tradition of rooting for the underdog. Billy Jack became the surprise hit of the early 1970s.

What happened?: Like its hero, the film was also a kind of outsider, shot on the cheap and dumped by several distributors before its eventual release. But after the success of Billy Jack, Laughlin was faced with the prospect of following up its surprise box-office returns. The film’s 1974 sequel The Trial of Billy Jack was also a hit, but it soon became clear that Laughlin was a one-trick pony as a director and star. 1977’s Billy Jack Goes to Washington was barely released, and Laughlin soon became a pop-culture footnote.

Does Billy Jack still work?: Nope. For Laughlin, Taylor, and the cast, Billy Jack is clearly a labor of love, but while the scruffiness of the film has a certain charm, this goodwill only carries it so far. For one thing, it’s hard to overlook the stiffness of most of the performances. Laughlin’s work is serviceable, although he doesn’t manage to make Billy Jack much more than a one-dimensional heroic type. Taylor fares worse- called on to be the emotional center of the film, she often seems uncomfortable in front of the camera, and as a result her big speeches don’t hit home. The townspeople are okay in cartoonish roles, but the students’ performances vary widely. For the most part, they’re natural in the scenes that feel improvised, and much less so in the more narrative-based moments.

The inconsistency of the students’ performances is reflective of the strange structure of the film, which alternates loose, almost Altmanesque scenes in the film with hamfisted stabs at drama. Unfortunately, Laughlin isn’t director enough to pull off either type of scene. The narrative scenes are too amateurish- in terms of acting, writing, and directing- to work. The improvised scenes come closer to working, but Laughlin could have used a more judicious editor in these scenes. As they stand, they drag on forever, thereby dulling most of their impact. Either way, there’s no reason for the film to be nearly two hours long, other than the fact that Laughlin was so clearly married to every frame of the film that he couldn’t sacrifice anything. But it could be worse- The Trial of Billy Jack runs almost three hours.

Yet for its multitude of flaws, Billy Jack has an innocence that’s sort of irresistible. What other movie would take several minutes out of the story to have its hero lecture a gang of toughs on the beauty of Native American culture before he administers an ass-beating? Billy Jack is disillusioned with the state of the modern world- at one point he asks, “In what remote corner of this country- no, entire goddamn planet- is there a place were men really care about one another and really love each other?” Yet the film and its director clearly believe in the ideals on which this country was founded, especially in its final scene, when Billy Jack turns himself in in the interest of bringing his concerns to light at the inevitable trial. Billy Jack isn’t a very good movie, but I’m glad it’s out there. It’s also comforting to know that, even today, Laughlin is still hoping to resurrect his trademark character in the interest of showing us all what he believes is a better way for America.

Burt Reynolds Builds a Bandit

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:30:00 GMT

First Rocky did it, then Rambo. Indiana Jones is about to do it, and even Dirty Harry is rumored to be thinking about it. So if all of these movie geezers can come out of retirement for one more adventure, why can’t the Bandit? Of course I refer to Bo “Bandit” Darville, the iconic Burt Reynolds rogue who drove circles around Sheriff Buford T. Justice in the Smokey and the Bandit movies. While a big-screen re-launch of the franchise may currently exist only in the sickest corner of my diseased brain, Burt Reynolds has recently reunited with the black TransAm he made famous. Sort of.

In Celebrity Rides: Burt Builds a Bandit, a 5-part series that aired on something called the DIY Network but is now available on DVD, Reynolds teams with car restoration company YearOne to design and build a new custom version of the car using the original 1977-78 model. Actually, saying Reynolds “teams” with the restoration group is a bit generous; he shows up at the shop a couple of times to reminisce and grunt a few suggestions, footage of which is scattered throughout the episodes to make him seem like a consistent presence. In fact, there’s probably less than an hour of actual content in the whole two-and-a-half hour series; the footage is all chopped and shuffled and re-used over and over, following the time-honored TV dictum: tell people what they’re going to see, let them see it, and then tell them what they just saw.

Still, if you’re a know-nothing gearhead like me, it’s fun to see an old-school TransAm pulled out of a field, completely stripped down and rebuilt to modern specifications, even if replacing the CB radio with an Alpine navigation system does seem like sacrilege. Clips from the original Smokey are scattered throughout, and they mostly serve to highlight how shockingly frail Reynolds looks these days. He’s making another big screen comeback attempt with Deal, in theaters tomorrow, but it’s a safe bet that his years of going eastbound and down are long behind him, good buddy.

Yesterday's Hits: Every Which Way But Loose (1978, James Fargo)

Paul Clark — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:00:00 GMT

It’s hard to remember now, but there was a time when Clint Eastwood wasn’t the critics’ favorite and Oscar juggernaut he is today. Back in the seventies, his films were labeled as lowbrow and pandering by most critics. This didn’t stop him from being one of the decade’s most reliable stars, and his thrillers and Westerns were solid hits. Still, there comes a time in almost every star’s career when he decides to broaden his appeal, to step outside his usual comfort zone into the sort of movie few people expect from him. For comedians, this is often a serious role designed to show off their dramatic chops. For larger-than-life stars, it’s something more down-to-earth, a more family-friendly vehicle to bring them down to Earth. And for Eastwood, it was playing opposite an orangutan named Clyde in Every Which Way But Loose.

What made Every Which Way But Loose a hit?: Every Which Way But Loose was originally written for Burt Reynolds, but while with Burt in the lead it might have just been another of his good-natured goofs, for Eastwood it was genuine change of pace. One of the tests of a beloved star is whether he can make his usual audiences follow him when he tries something new. And follow Eastwood they did with Every Which Way But Loose, which became one of the biggest hits of his career. The fight scenes were rough-and-tumble enough to satisfy Eastwood’s fan base, but Clyde’s presence in the film helped to soften his character in other ways. Trucker Philo Beddoe is more sensitive than the enigmatic loners he usually played- friendly, uncertain, tentative around women. As Philo says, “I'm not afraid of any man, but when it comes to sharing my feelings with a woman, my stomach turns to jelly.” This no doubt had some appeal for audience members- especially women- who couldn’t relate to his more stoic characters like Harry Callahan.

But let’s not underestimate Clyde’s appeal. Even for those of us who like to think we’re above lowbrow animal humor, there’s something about primates that strikes a universal note in audiences. Perhaps it’s the way they can ape (sorry) traditional human behavior, but in an outsized, cartoonish way. Regardless, Every Which Way But Loose gets a lot of mileage from Clyde acting like a person- drinking beer, giving people the finger, driving, doing his little victory dance when Philo wins a fight. The Clint’n’Clyde combination provided so irresistible to audiences that the film spawned sequel, Any Which Way You Can (also a hit), and a rash of imitations, most obviously the televised trucker-and-primate series BJ and the Bear.

What happened?: Unpretentious entertainments like Every Which Way But Loose aren’t really designed for the long haul. Its ambitions are modest- to make people laugh, to showcase some popular country songs, to have a fist fight every ten minutes or so, and to let people forget their troubles for two hours. Worthy goals all, but not the sort of traits that help a movie to stand the test of time, or which cry out for critical re-evaluation. Today, Every Which Way But Loose feels like it was practically made to be watched late at night on basic cable. It’s the kind of movie that people remember fondly but don’t feel the need to seek out again.

Does Every Which Way But Loose still work?: Better than expected, but still not quite. Most people only remember the fight scenes and the byplay between Eastwood and Clyde, but the film contains quite a bit of filler to bring it up to a 114 minute running time, and not all of it’s good. Naturally, Philo’s frequent fist fights cause him to run afoul of a number of people, and when he, his friend Orville (Geoffrey Lewis), and Clyde take to the road, they’ve got both a biker gang and a pair of bumbling cops on their tail. It’s hard to say which of the two bands of pursuers are less funny. The cops are pretty superfluous to the plot, and the film could have cut them out entirely without incurring any structural damage. By contrast, we spend more time with the bikers, but it’s not time well-spent. Aside from the moment when Ruth Gordon (playing Orville’s salty-mouthed Ma) hauls out a shotgun and starts blowing up their bikes, the bikers’ scenes mostly feel pointless. In both cases, the scenes distract from the stuff we came for.

Yet other elements of Every Which Way But Loose hold up surprisingly well. Most films would portray Philo’s courting, and subsequent pursuing, of country singer Lynn Halsey-Taylor (played by Eastwood’s then-girlfriend Sondra Locke) as a traditional romance. Yet from the beginning there’s something off about her character. Lynn- who surprisingly isn’t the heiress to the drinking fountain empire- stares too intently and tries too hard to make Philo fall in love with her, and Philo, true to form, falls for it. Watching the film, I thought this might be a fault of the performance, but considering the truth we find out about the character, it ends up making a lot of sense. I was genuinely surprised by the direction the film went with this storyline- not so much because it comes out of nowhere, but because I thought it was too good-natured to go there.

I also liked the ambiguous note the film takes in its climactic fight scene, in which Philo ends up taking a dive against aging legend Tank Murdock (Walter Barnes). It’s rare for a character in this kind of film to not get what he sets out for, but that’s part of the movie’s charm. At the end of the day, Every Which Way But Loose isn’t an especially good movie- it’s too unfocused for that, with too much lame filler that could have easily gotten cut without being missed. But it’s likable enough that I can almost forgive it its missteps. And I think it goes without saying that Clyde is still awesome.

Under the Hood of Eastwood’s “Gran Torino”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Clint Eastwood has stayed behind the camera since Million Dollar Baby in 2004, but a mysterious new project announced by Warner Bros. finds the 77-year-old back in the driver's seat. Eastwood will direct and star in Gran Torino, due to hit theaters not long after his next directorial effort, Changeling starring Angelina Jolie, is released on November 7th.

Since no additional details about the movie have been released, it's a prime candidate for speculation, both informed and nonsensical. Take this from The Guardian: "If the title is any clue, Gran Torino is the name of a 1970s Ford car model — the same one Starsky and Hutch drove in the TV series." Hmm. . . fascinating stuff, but I think we can rule out another Starsky and Hutch remake at this point, particularly one starring the AARP poster boy.

A slightly more intriguing theory comes courtesy of "Kurt" from North Hollywood, who emailed Harry Knowles at Ain't It Cool News, claiming that a representative of Village Roadshow Pictures had expressed interest in a Gran Torino he was selling. "He told me they were looking for the right car for a new Clint Eastwood movie. He said it was a thriller about a killer that drives a certain torino. His 1972 Ford Gran Torino is the only thing the police have on him. A retired police lieutenant, one Harry Callahan, makes it his mission to track down the culprit when two young police officers, one Callahan's grandson, are shot and killed by the guy."

Harry Callahan is better known, of course, as Dirty Harry, the rule-bending cop Eastwood played in five movies, most recently 1988's The Dead Pool. Sure, it would be a little odd to see Serious Respected Filmmaker Eastwood go back to chasing bad guys with a big gun, but maybe he figures Sylvester Stallone shouldn't have all the fun. Somewhere Burt Reynolds is out looking for a black TransAm.

The Top Ten Action Heroes Who Deserve A Comeback, Part 2

Peter Smith — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 14:00:00 GMT

5. Alan "Dutch" Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Predator

When it comes to sheer coolness, few action movies can top John McTiernan's Predator. The uncomplicated tale of a Special Forces unit being stalked by an alien trophy hunter has little time to waste on anything that doesn't involve an explosion. Though the Predators themselves have returned to the screen several times (most recently in this year's Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem), Dutch Schaefer has yet to be granted a rematch with the beasts. The role of the wisecracking soldier who transforms into an instinct-driven animal is one of the roles that put Arnold Schwarzenegger on the map. The sooner his political career ends, the sooner Arnold can get back to doing what he does best — punching extraterrestrials in the face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoRHcyf3lv0

4. Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), Escape from New York

John Carpenter's Escape From New York is set in a bleak near-future in which Manhattan is a prison colony. The film is a bare-bones affair with little budget for flashy set-pieces, which may be why the film's fans feel so much affection for megacool antihero Snake Plissken. In 1980, Kurt Russell was best known for Disney's The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, and his portrayal of the grim Plissken changed the trajectory of his entire career. The 1995 remaquel Escape From LA is oft-mocked, but it's both more showy and more fun. Its conclusion follows the nihilism of the bad-guy action hero to its furthest extreme: Plissken single-handedly destroys civilization and plunges the world back to the Stone Age. It's a great setup for further adventures in an even wilder setting, and with Russell riding a wave of newfound respect after Grindhouse, the time is ripe for Plissken to return.

3. William Bonney/Billy the Kid (Emilio Estevez), Young Guns

Jack Torrance and Hannibal Lecter are certainly great screen maniacs, but for my money, one of the greatest psychopaths in film history is Emilio Estevez's Billy the Kid. In this flashy revisionist western, Billy turns a gang of would-be heroes into a group of coldblooded killers. He takes obvious glee in bloodshed, often toying with his victims before pulling the trigger. His stated reason for killing his first victim: "He was hackin' on me." The framing sequence of Young Guns 2 reveals that Billy survived well into the twentieth century, so there's plenty of room for continuing adventures.

2. Casey Ryback (Steven Seagal), Under Siege

For a brief period in the early '90s, Steven Seagal was the king of the action flick. In 1992, following a string of generically-titled bloodbaths, he made the best film of his career: Under Siege. Much of the film's charm comes from its over-the-top villains, portrayed by Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones, whose scheme to hijack a soon-to-be-decommissioned battleship comes straight from the Bond villain playbook. But the film's real strength is Steven Seagal's ebullient performance as Casey Ryback, a demoted Navy SEAL serving out his term as a cook — "a lowly, lowly cook." Ryback is calm about the hijacked ship; he only gets really angry when Busey insults his cooking. Seagal's films never stopped being fun, but he's never had another character anywhere near as entertaining as Ryback.

1. Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood), Dirty Harry

With Dirty Harry, Don Siegel created the standard by which action films would be judged for decades to come. The film's story of a copy whose hunt for a serial killer is hampered by red tape and the Bill of Rights led to four sequels and a legion of imitators. Subsequent action heroes owe a lot to Harry, from Kurt Russell and Steven Seagal's gruff whispers to Axel Foley and Popeye Doyle's refusal to play by the rules. In the years since The Dead Pool, the fifth and final Dirty Harry film, Clint Eastwood has gained a reputation for both sophistication and simplicity, both as an actor and a director. A return to the character of Callahan would almost certainly become a meditation of the nature of violence and the lingering ghosts of past carnage. But it would also be fucking awesome. There are rumors that Eastwood has retired from acting, but for the sake of action films past, present, and future, Dirty Harry deserves a swansong.

Read PART 1.