Cinema
One-man
Clancy Sigal
The Gauntlet (Warner West End 2, ABC Shaftesbury Avenue)
Clint Eastwood may be having second thoughts about law and order. All through the Nixon presidency —since Coogan's Bluff in 1968 — he was like a third arm of the American government, embodying in movie-fantasy form the hardball ethic that was the Nixon-Agnew team's idea of patriotism. In Dirty Harry, Magum Force and The Enforcer, Eastwood broke down doors without a warrant, kicked suspects in the crotch and shot 'punks' on sight in his oneman war against crime.
Clint-the-cop always had a strong streak of anti-cop in him. His real enemies were the namby-pamby bureaucrats in the Police Commissioner's office, his best (in fact only) friends were low-ranking crime fighters on the street like himself. When Clint shot down a sniper it sometimes seemed as if he was really aiming at the mayor and all those smart-talking young lawyers around him; he fought a corrupt City Hall by decimating the city's junkies and thieves. It may not have been logical or even intelligent but it was community politics of a sort.
The Gauntlet (X certificate) is a postVietnam study in Dirty Harry's disillusionment with the system. It is also a hugely entertaining fairy tale, raunchy and violent but somehow rather sweet, about a cop who discovers that he has more to fear from his brothers-in-blue than he does from the Mob.
Directing himself, Eastwood plays a surly, alcoholic detective in the Phoenix, Arizona, police department who long ago gave up thoughts of promotion —or of meeting Ms Right. About the only thing that keeps him going these days is contact with 'the bricks' — the day-to-day skirmishes on the street — and a lingering idealistic faith in the job. This is utterly demolished when he learns — from a sharp-tongued, collegeeducated prostitute he has been sent to extradite from Las Vegas because she's a key witness in an impending trial — that they have both been set up by the police working with the Mafia who want to shut her up. On their car trip together through the desert she forces Eastwood to face up to the truth, that he is a has-been cop who is considered expendable by his own boss, a Mob-owned officer named Blakelock.
For once, there is a thoughtful aspect to all the gunfire. Eastwood clearly wants to draw our attention to the problem of police overkill. 'They're cops — the bastards are paid to shoot, not think,' sneers Blakelock, the evil police commander. And there are two major scenes of policemen in the
Mafia's pay using their guns like mindless robots. Eastwood seems to be hinting at the fundamental powerlesness of weapons. beause in neither case do the officers catch their quarry, just create a lot of havoc.
Clint hasn't had a conversion, exactly. He isn't about to join a hippie commune or the anti-gun lobby. But for once he is thinking instead of just reacting. The past year was particularly hurtful with the loss of Hollywood movie-makers who made our lives so much more enjoY' able — Bing Crosby, Joan Crawford, Groucho Marx, Peter Finch, Elvis and Charlie Chaplin. But the death of the vet. eran Hollywood director Howard Hawks perhaps is the most painful. It will take years to 'assess' Hawks properly. He sur vived in a tough business by making ma' vellous pictures that did well at the boY office. More than any other director! prcfef watching his pictures again for sheer pleas' ure: whether crime dramas like Scarpee of The Big Sleep, comedies like Bringing UP Baby and His Girl Friday, or adventures like Red River and Only Angels HO( Wings. I'm not sure if he stretched the Hol' lywood form to its limit or turned it upside down.
•
Previous page
