(1968)
3
Michael Costello
While Don Siegel's fish-out-of-water cop film is a stylish action film, it also features a fine understated comic performance by Clint Eastwood. The story concerns a Stetson-wearing deputy who comes to New York in pursuit of an escaped killer (Don Stroud). Apparently the only film Eastwood ever shot in New York, it derives its comic energy from the repugnance with which his uptight deputy regards almost everyone and everything he encounters in the city, from the compassion of social workers for obviously undeserving criminals, to the miles of red tape that tie cops in knots, to the more flagrant antics of the 1968 vintage counterculture. The expression on Eastwood's face as he observes the chemically influenced activities unfolding at a club based on the famed Electric Circus is alone worth the price of admission. More seriously, the casting of Stroud, an actor of limited talent and a physical presence hinting at recent simian ancestry, implies that the criminal is an animal being hunted in a urban jungle. In touching on the frustrations of police bureaucracy, it presages the Eastwood's enduringly popular Dirty Harry series. Aside from the star, Lee J. Cobb is also excellent as a put-upon cop, as is the spirited Susan Clark.
Coogan's Bluff on AllMovie
Coogan's Bluff (1968)
