I was debating which movie to review this week. Normally, I always have a few titles floating merrily in the back of my mind. However, more often than not, I don’t write anything about them because they just don’t speak to me. They don’t stand out. A movie really needs to go that extra mile, and either be a lot better or a lot worse than I expected, in order to elicit a passionate need to discuss it in me. So I was in a bit of a pickle. I just couldn’t think of anything really worthwhile to review. Then, last week, my friend brought Clint Eastwood’s 1977 Cop Thriller THE GAUNTLET to Bad Movie Monday and I knew as soon as the end credits started rolling that this was the movie I was going to write about. Good God Almighty.
Quick Recap! When COVID shut down everything in early 2020, I started an online bad movie night get-together with some friends that we eventually dubbed “Bad Movie Monday”. The premise was simple: We’d torture each other every Monday with the worst trash we could find, tell a few jokes, cheer each other up, and in the process maybe discover some weird obscure cinema that we might never have seen any other way. This series of reviews will feature highlights of those night, along with some of my favorite trash, so you can all share in the fun and maybe get some ideas for your own movie night.
Now, I want to make it very clear that I love Clint Eastwood more than mere words can convey. To me, he is arguably one of the best actor-turned-directors of all time. Right up there with John Cassavetes or Orson Welles. Nearly all of the movies he’s directed are amazing. Even if you don’t like them, you can still respect them. All except for one, this one, which feels like a Chuck Norris film from the eighties that they just happened to shoot in the seventies with Eastwood as the star. It’s so out of character for Clint to make this kind of vapid trash that I’m not sure why he picked it at all. It’s a bizarre blip in his directorial career, that’s for sure.
SO WHAT’S THE STORY, JEREMY?
I don’t really have to badly sum up the story because there isn’t much to sum up. A loser alcoholic cop named Ben Shockley, played by Eastwood, is tasked with escorting a prostitute named Augustina Mally, played by his then girlfriend Sondra Locke, from Las Vegas to Phoenix so she can go testify in court. However, a bunch of mobsters and corrupt cops are after them and they’ve brought LOTS of bullets. I mean A LOT.
PREDICTIONS, PROMISES, AND PONDERINGS!
#1 – The movie has a promising opening, with beer bottles falling out of Eastwood’s squad car as his character stumbles drunkenly into work. In a very short time we’re shown that this isn’t a sarcastic and confident Dirty Harry type of cop. Instead, this is a complete loser who only superficially makes us think of Harry because the same actor plays them both. I always liked how Eastwood was never afraid to play jerks in movies.
#2 – One of the more jarring aspects of the film is that every single police officer in this film is either corrupt and immoral or corrupt and outright evil. This doesn’t bother me, except that Eastwood’s films have always been very nuanced. Good guys aren’t always good, and bad guys aren’t always bad. Here, it’s basically one note characterization across the board. To the point where the bad guys barely get any dialogue.
#3 – One of the pluses to this movie is the really cool looking 1970s sleazy cop thriller vibe that it has, and the fact that it has a kind of interesting Jazz soundtrack. Also, Sondra Locke is very cute and Clint Eastwood’s hair is pretty damn amazing.
#4 – About halfway through watching this, it occurred to me that ACTION USA is pretty much the exact same movie. Except it was made for a lot less money and is a lot more entertaining.
#5 – Remember that scene in the original PREDATOR when Dutch and his men wildly shoot about a billion bullets at the Predator, flattening about a quarter mile of jungle in the process? Every shootout in this movie plays like that, and it’s as stupid as it sounds. Predator got away with it because it did it once. This movie does it like two or three times, and it becomes more ludicrous each time.
#6 – GAUNTLET is part of what I call the “Not Dirty Harry Trilogy” of films Eastwood made, which also includes TIGHTROPE and THE ROOKIE where it basically looks like he took rejected Harry scripts and just filmed them anyway because it gave him freedom to do stuff he couldn’t have done with the Harry character.
#7 – I think the biggest problem with GAUNTLET is that the movies Eastwood directs, for the most part, try to have some sort of depth and nuance and a running theme. GAUNTLET doesn’t. It’s just sort of a mindless action movie with very little action and lots of mindlessness. It’s slso very slow and boring and episodic for what should be just one long chase from Las Vegas to Phoenix. Had this been made ten years later, this would have been a very different movie.
#8 – One of the positives of an Eastwood movie is that the female leads are rarely just props. As bad as it is, GAUNTLET is no different. Locke’s character is smart and tough and resourceful. The only problem is that her character’s so badly written that her smarts and toughness seem to come out of nowhere. Same was Eastwood’s character. He’s supposed to be dumb and incompetent, but because I kept seeing Dirty Harry instead of Ben Shockley his stupidity and incompetence always seemed to come out of nowhere as well. It’s as if the ambition to make nuanced characters was there but the skill wasn’t.
#9 – Without getting into Sondra Locke and Clint Eastwood’s real life relationship at the time, especially it’s later acrimonious end, I’ll just say that while there is some genuine warmth between them in this movie there’s also very little chemistry. The characters they play fall in love at some point, for some reason. I don’t know why, and I don’t think the movie does either. It’s probably shoved in there because that’s how most of Hollywood thinks movies with a male and female lead should end. There’s no buildup to this, and it just feels like it was randomly inserted because they had to come up with some reason why Locke’s character would stick with Eastwood for the big showdown at the end.
#10 – Speaking of the end… Everyone’s actions during the last fifteen minutes of this movie make no goddamn sense at all. Eastwood and Locke steal a bus and weld some armour inside of it in order to go back to Phoenix so she can testify in court. Then they openly, and slowly, drive through the city streets as the police shoot enough bullets at them to re-enact the Vietnam War. Why???? Why do our heroes that instead of calling the FBI to tell them that the Phoenix Police Commissioner is corrupt and trying to kill them? The Commissioner has hardly been subtle about it and has left plenty of evidence of wrongdoing. Also, why are the cops shooting at them. I’m no expert in police procedure, but this does not not seem standard.
WAS IT REALLY THAT BAD?
Hell yes it was bad. I used to think THE ROOKIE was Eastwood’s worst film. Not because it was terrible or anything, it’s actually one of my favourite movies of his, but because it’s one of his least substantial works. It’s not as meaty as his other stuff and is merely content with being a fun action movie and not much else. However, GAUNTLET isn’t really fun to watch. It’s a real drag. So unless it’s a childhood favourite or something, like if it was the movie you went on a first date with your wife with, this is just terrible. ROOKIE is mostly a great film with no ambition, while GAUNTLET seems to have ambition but isn’t very great.
