‘You better drop that blade, or you won’t believe what happens next, even while it’s happening...’
Director Don Siegel and legendary actor Clint Eastwood made five films together between 1968 and 1979, including The Beguiled, Dirty Harry and Escape from Alcatraz. This quintet of films, along with the spaghetti westerns Eastwood made with Sergio Leone, formed the backbone of Clint’s imperial phase. The first Siegel and Eastwood collaboration, however, was Coogan’s Bluff, and the latter’s gritty, tough-guy performance set the blueprint for everything that would follow after…
Walter Coogan (Eastwood) is the deputy sheriff of a fictional Arizona town who manages to become embroiled in the pursuit of a serial killer in New York City. Don Stroud plays the killer. The always reliable Lee J. Cobb plays disgruntled detective Lieutenant McElroy. It’s all good stuff.
Following in the footsteps of Bonnie and Clyde a year earlier and preceding Easy Rider a year later, Coogan’s Bluff helped to usher in a new era of American cinema that took its cues from the more violent and risque films being churned out in Europe and Asia. While New Hollywood wasn’t quite in full swing by this point, it was certainly on the horizon, and by the time Siegel and Eastwood combined again on Dirty Harry, the two would be creating cinema every bit as violent and subversive as Coppola or Scorsese. While Coogan’s Bluff isn’t as good as what would follow, it’s still daring, groundbreaking cinema.
By anticipating the gritty urban crime dramas of the ’70s, Coogan’s Bluff and Eastwood helped to provide a bridge between the Westerns of the ’60s and the police procedurals of the ’70s. Landmark cinema, if a little slow by today’s standards.
