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#336 - Coogan's Bluff
Don Siegel, 1968
An Arizona lawman is called to New York in order to extradite a criminal.
I wasn't particularly impressed with Coogan's Bluff when I first saw it and it's sad to say that a second viewing hasn't done it any favours. It's a none-too-creative fish-out-of-water tale starring Clint Eastwood as the eponymous Coogan, a gruff womaniser who carries out his own brand of rough (but not deadly) justice against the crooks on his turf, which naturally makes his superiors want to send him to New York almost as a means of getting rid of him. From there the film becomes a series of vignettes where Coogan, standing out in a ten-gallon cowboy hat and a bolo tie, navigates the mean streets of 1960s New York while butting heads with both the local fuzz and hoods alike. The film has a very thin plot that invokes a lot of cop movie clichés and it's padded out with Coogan making cool-headed advances on whatever women take his fancy and occasionally dealing with inner-city grifters and hippies.
As a result, Coogan's Bluff is a very lightweight film underneath its tough and somewhat conservative exterior. Granted, it has the occasional interesting or amusing moment such as Coogan making his way through a psychedelic nightclub (resulting in one of the best one-liners of Eastwood's career) or the finale where Coogan chases down the perp. Some of the film's more dated aspects do undercut one's enjoyment of the film, such as Coogan's off-putting treatment of his target's girlfriend during the later stages of the film even after taking into consideration how his actions are supposedly justified by his need to track down his man. His cavalier attitude towards other female characters he encounters does make him a difficult character to like, and not in the same complicated manner that defined a character like Harry Callahan. Considering the presence of both Siegel and Eastwood, it's easy to just write this off as a practice run for Dirty Harry with a lot of rough edges to both its plot and characterisation. It's not too boring or offensive to be truly awful, but it is just enough so that I have trouble saying I genuinely enjoyed it. Good if you really want more of Eastwood being something of a badass, but he's definitely done it far better in many other films.
Don Siegel, 1968
An Arizona lawman is called to New York in order to extradite a criminal.
I wasn't particularly impressed with Coogan's Bluff when I first saw it and it's sad to say that a second viewing hasn't done it any favours. It's a none-too-creative fish-out-of-water tale starring Clint Eastwood as the eponymous Coogan, a gruff womaniser who carries out his own brand of rough (but not deadly) justice against the crooks on his turf, which naturally makes his superiors want to send him to New York almost as a means of getting rid of him. From there the film becomes a series of vignettes where Coogan, standing out in a ten-gallon cowboy hat and a bolo tie, navigates the mean streets of 1960s New York while butting heads with both the local fuzz and hoods alike. The film has a very thin plot that invokes a lot of cop movie clichés and it's padded out with Coogan making cool-headed advances on whatever women take his fancy and occasionally dealing with inner-city grifters and hippies.
As a result, Coogan's Bluff is a very lightweight film underneath its tough and somewhat conservative exterior. Granted, it has the occasional interesting or amusing moment such as Coogan making his way through a psychedelic nightclub (resulting in one of the best one-liners of Eastwood's career) or the finale where Coogan chases down the perp. Some of the film's more dated aspects do undercut one's enjoyment of the film, such as Coogan's off-putting treatment of his target's girlfriend during the later stages of the film even after taking into consideration how his actions are supposedly justified by his need to track down his man. His cavalier attitude towards other female characters he encounters does make him a difficult character to like, and not in the same complicated manner that defined a character like Harry Callahan. Considering the presence of both Siegel and Eastwood, it's easy to just write this off as a practice run for Dirty Harry with a lot of rough edges to both its plot and characterisation. It's not too boring or offensive to be truly awful, but it is just enough so that I have trouble saying I genuinely enjoyed it. Good if you really want more of Eastwood being something of a badass, but he's definitely done it far better in many other films.