Just the Ticket #39: Gruff 'n' Bluff
For those of you who don't know much about Central Washington in general, or about small towns in Central Washington specifically, when it hits summer time around here, people start selling and donating all the old stuff that didn't serve them very well through the past winter. In fact, you can pretty much go yard sale- and thrift store-hopping and track the things you sold or gave to people as the months go by. Sometimes, they even have some decent movies (assuming their children haven't thrown up on them, used them to play DJ Hero on the coffee table, or been unsuccessful at tracking down their favorite Frisbee and decided to have a DVD fight instead). As such, my folks have amassed quite an impressive collection of Clint Eastwood classics, one of which is the 1968 police drama, Coogan's Bluff.
It opens with Eastwood as Coogan (first name Mister, middle name Deputy Sherriff for all we know), an Arizona lawman on the hunt for a murderer named Ringerman (Don Stroud of License to Kill and The Amityville Horror), who later winds up institutionalized in New York for overdosing on LSD.
In his cockeyed cowboy hat and bouncing along a desert road in an old Jeep, you'd swear Eastwood was Joe Kidd or the Stranger, saddling his way into town to serve up some outlaw justice against a local gang of thieves.
But Eastwood's Coogan is more of a Dirty Harry Callahan with a steadfast heart and a wandering eye. He doesn't take bribes, doesn't like being conned by big-city cabbies and concierges, and knows what he wants and when he wants it. In this case, Coogan wants his quarry out of New York, he wants pussy, and he wants them both immediately. But his impatience, it soon becomes evident, is more trouble than it's worth, as Coogan's efforts to circumvent the local police lieutenant (Lee J. Cobb, Angry Man #3 in the original 12 Angry Men), the New York Supreme Court, and the Bellevue asylum test his budding relationship with a beautiful probation officer (Susan Clark, who also worked with Cobb in The Virginian) and lead him on a wild goose chase for the escaped Ringerman that will take him through seedy motels, exhibitionist nightclubs, and dangerous dive bars on the way to an impressive (for its time) motorcycle chase at New York's Cloisters Museum.
The most iconic thing about Coogan's Bluff, aside from the Coogan character himself, is how much more creative and subtle Hollywood was with sexual innuendo back when a few T&A shots were enough to garner an R-Rating from the MPAA. When not in the midst of gun battles with oddly placed ballistics and one-note gunshot effects, or engaged in fistfights with enough obscuring camera angles and breaking wood that they might be confused with today's average pro-wrestling match, Eastwood has some really entertaining exchanges with Bluff's leading ladies (his wooing of Clark in particular).
At the risk of spending Midnight In Paris and time-travelling back to the late 60's, I have to say filmmaking was so much better back then, even though the moral of the story was so Aesopian and the special effects kind of sucked.
B+
In his cockeyed cowboy hat and bouncing along a desert road in an old Jeep, you'd swear Eastwood was Joe Kidd or the Stranger, saddling his way into town to serve up some outlaw justice against a local gang of thieves.
But Eastwood's Coogan is more of a Dirty Harry Callahan with a steadfast heart and a wandering eye. He doesn't take bribes, doesn't like being conned by big-city cabbies and concierges, and knows what he wants and when he wants it. In this case, Coogan wants his quarry out of New York, he wants pussy, and he wants them both immediately. But his impatience, it soon becomes evident, is more trouble than it's worth, as Coogan's efforts to circumvent the local police lieutenant (Lee J. Cobb, Angry Man #3 in the original 12 Angry Men), the New York Supreme Court, and the Bellevue asylum test his budding relationship with a beautiful probation officer (Susan Clark, who also worked with Cobb in The Virginian) and lead him on a wild goose chase for the escaped Ringerman that will take him through seedy motels, exhibitionist nightclubs, and dangerous dive bars on the way to an impressive (for its time) motorcycle chase at New York's Cloisters Museum.
The most iconic thing about Coogan's Bluff, aside from the Coogan character himself, is how much more creative and subtle Hollywood was with sexual innuendo back when a few T&A shots were enough to garner an R-Rating from the MPAA. When not in the midst of gun battles with oddly placed ballistics and one-note gunshot effects, or engaged in fistfights with enough obscuring camera angles and breaking wood that they might be confused with today's average pro-wrestling match, Eastwood has some really entertaining exchanges with Bluff's leading ladies (his wooing of Clark in particular).
At the risk of spending Midnight In Paris and time-travelling back to the late 60's, I have to say filmmaking was so much better back then, even though the moral of the story was so Aesopian and the special effects kind of sucked.
B+
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