‘I looked out over the Mississippi and swore I’d never leave…’
To say he’s had such a long and storied career, Clint Eastwood has never done much horror. 1984’s Tightrope is a scuzzy thriller more akin to the work of Brian De Palma than Clint’s usual fare and while it has some great moments, it doesn’t quite hang together.
Grizzled detective Wes Block (Eastwood) is searching for a killer of women who shares his own proclivity for bondage and S & M. When Block meets woman’s rights activist Beryl Thibodeaux (Geneviève Bujold) she begins to open his eyes to the danger of being a woman in the city of New Orleans in the 1980s. While both of these plot threads are interesting, they never really dovetail in a way that is satisfying. Perhaps as a result of Eastwood losing faith in first-time director Richard Tuggle and so directing much of the film himself, Tightrope never fires on all cylinders in the way that it should.
That being said, Eastwood himself is great as a funhouse mirror version of Harry Callahan from the Dirty Harry franchise and all shadowed streets of New Orleans make for a compelling sandbox for Eastwood and his supporting cast to play around in (shout out to Dan Hedaya who is great as always).
Tightrope is one of the more forgotten films in Eastwood’s oeuvre but it’s worth seeking out. We see a darker side to the iconic here than perhaps ever before and for that reason alone this forgotten curio deserves a wider audience.
