Clint Eastwood is a Cop Who Hates Everybody

Dirty Harry

                The first interesting fact about this movie is that Clint Eastwood’s famous line of “Do you feel lucky, punk?” actually comes quite early on, although it does come again later on at the end.    This movie is about a cop named Harry (portrayed by Clint Eastwood) who pretty much hates everybody and is willing to go to whatever lengths of violence are necessary in order to get the job done.  

                Although this isn’t a western in any sense (Except for maybe the gun play and Eastwood being the star), I don’t really have a blog fit for this review, so I’ve just stuck it here with what will become many other Clint Eastwood movies reviewed, as I primarily view Eastwood as an actor in westerns regardless of what else he may have done or do in the future. 

                This whole movie is pretty much about Harry trying to save a little girl and it kind of reminds me of Sin City in that way.    It truly is a great movie, a classic for all of the right reasons and not just because it spawned several not-as-good sequels.  

So Good Metallica Wrote a Song about It

Unforgiven

                This seems like not only a somewhat standard plot for Clint Eastwood western movies, but also a standard plot for westerns in general.  Our opening scene is the brutal maiming of a prostitute and the only sort of action taken as punishment is those responsible get fined.    So this kid- who I always just think of as “kid”, you know like in Dick Tracy- goes out and hires Will Munny, who was once the baddest man in all of the west.  

                Will manages to recruit his former partner, Ned (Morgan Freeman) and then after some obvious fighting the three begin their quest to kill the men who cut up a lady.   

                What first struck me funny about this movie is the way the game telephone comes into play.   When the kid tells Will, and then Will tells Ned, it seems like the details of just how badly this woman was cut up get worse and worse.   What’s even more so is that it seems to be less played upon the fact that she is a prostitute.   I’m not saying prostitutes are less than human, but in Detroit if a whore got cut no one would flinch.                  

                Toward the end of the movie, as Will and the kid have managed to kill off everyone except Gene Hackman, we find out that Ned has died.   This actually made me really sad and I wish it wasn’t a part of this movie.   It gave Will Munny this very clear vengeance to go through and shoot everyone and anyone who got in his way, sure, but we never actually got to see any sort of closure on the subject.   For all of the pain and torment that Will Munny’s character goes through during the course of this movie, you would have to imagine that the worst of it comes when he tells Ned’s widow the news. 

The Sequel is Not My Problem

3:10 to Yuma (1957)

                This original movie based on the Elmore Leonard story has Van Heflin and Glenn Ford as the stars.    It’s not as long as the remake you’ve probably seen with Christian Bale, yet my wife somehow managed to remark that it seemed to be slower moving.    I will always prefer the black and white classics to their modern day counterparts.

                I especially like the end of this movie because the criminal says he’s broken out of Yuma a bunch of times so it doesn’t really faze him having to go there.    At the same time, his captor says that he just has to get him to Yuma, what he does when he gets there is not his concern.   So after the whole, intense, sort of life or death movie with seeing the job through to the end, it concludes with somewhat of a joke.   I liked that.   I thought it was a nice touch.

The Priest Collar is Coming Off

Pale Rider

                In this movie, Clint Eastwood plays a preacher who comes to town and tries to stop some bullies.   It’s kind of your typical western movie, only with Clint Eastwood shooting up people and a lot of other people being shot a lot too.  

                This movie is directed by Eastwood also, and let me tell you, when he takes off his Daffy Duck/preachers collar and picks up his guns I got goose bumps because I knew it was going down. 

                Who is this character and where did he come from?  It doesn’t really matter, and that’s what I like about this movie also.   If this was made nowadays it’d need seven prequels as a back story.    Sometimes you just want to see someone do what’s right and shoot a bunch of bad guys with terrible aim.