TIGHTROPE (1984) - ***1/2

Back in 2004 when Actor/Director Clint Eastwood got in trouble over the euthanasia sequence in his MILLION DOLLAR BABY, I thought it was rather strange how a man once seen by right-wingers as the epitome of law enforcement ultra-justice in DIRTY HARRY was now out of touch with the Neo-Conservative crowd. Certainly it's no secret that Eastwood is a Republican (was even a Nixon supporter) but as a cinematic artist he's willing at times to explore beyond his ideological shell, even question assumed truths, and you gotta dig that. I mean if anyone else had shot LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, that person would have been automatically slammed as a leftist God-hating traitor by the likes of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, but since this is Eastwood, nobody complained.

That's the awesome power of Eastwood right there.

But anyway he didn't shoot TIGHTROPE, and on the surface it seems like a routine Dirty Harry-esque picture. Eastwood as a tough cop who uses his fists and guns to stop crime? Been there, done that. Eastwood fighting a serial killer terrorizing a city? Yup. Eastwood spouting one-liners? Ditto. Eastwood having problems with women around him? What else you expect?. How about him getting his kicks from handcuffing prostitutes and then having sex with them?

OK, that's a new weird one for Dirty Harry.

You have to respect Eastwood for willingly taking the risk of alienating certain demographics of his fanbase with such a character, a cop in New Orleans who ends up investigating a series of brutal strangulations, most of whom Eastwood had hired previously for his kinky games. So we're walking a TIGHTROPE between the usual action cinema heroics in stopping this murderer, and him wrestling with his conscience about his treatment of women as mere sex objects, especially after teaming up with Genevieve Bujold, continuing her feminist schtick from COMA.

TIGHTROPE was written and helmed by Richard Tuggle, who scripted the last Eastwood/Don Spiegel collaboration in ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ. If you've seen a serial killer movie in the last 20 years, TIGHTROPE's plotting seems pretty routine procedural material, but what I dig is the touches he gives to a pretty effective popcorn psychological thriller. This flick openly suggests that Eastwood's fetish comes from his desire to reign control over women at a time when they were demanding equal power, if not more...which perhaps is why he got divorced. What I think is intriguing is that besides his nightly shenanigans down in the French Quarter, Tuggle makes a point of the fact that he's the patriarchal rock for his two daughters seem to only acerbate the problem.

Consider also a nice throwaway shot is when Eastwood's oldest kid, played by his real-life offspring Alison Eastwood, catches a peep of the crime scene photos from his case file. You expect a direct payoff from this, which you don't get but the dividends do arrive when Eastwood gets drunk because he can't beat this killer. In most movies, such a scene would tie in of how his ex-wife or kids yell at him for dragging work to home or for boozing. Instead, the girl tries to take care of him, as if to say "Yeah you're a jerk at times, and you're drinking, but I sorta understand why."

I also dig Tuggle's approach with the villain. A mistake that many filmmakers tend to make is going over-the-top with how crazy or sadistic the baddie is, like with Brett Ratner's RED DRAGON where Ralph Fiennes has pumped-up muscles, tattoos all over his body, and some rather nasty teeth, because you know only a psychopath would look like that. Yet I think sometimes an understated approach does the job better. I mean, you see him behind one of his victims, she turns around to see....a guy wearing a kabuki mask, and you go what the fuck? Fiennes is fine for a comic book I guess, but with TIGHTROPE, I see that sort of asshole actually living in our world.

The heroes and creeps engaged in a cat-and-mouse mind game is a staple of the genre, but I liked how Tuggle has the antagonist just likes to fuck with Eastwood, which the villain mockingly points out that they both have some of the same "peculiar" tastes. Consider an early scene when after a "meeting" with a hooker, Eastwood realizes that he left his tie back at her place, and we forget about it. Then later when he finds her dead, he sees that the exact same tie is hanging around a nearby statue. But that's nothing compared to when the murderer invades Eastwood's home, and locks his 12-year old kid to the bed with the very same handcuffs that Eastwood used in his sex games.

Now that's fucked up. Really, you gotta commend that such a visual idea perhaps wouldn't be used in Hollywood 2008, and yet it was done 24 years ago. A pity that Tuggle's only other theatrical directorial work was the Anthony Michael Hall vehicle OUT OF BOUNDS, for with TIGHTROPE he showed some competent talent. Plus, as someone at IMDB pointed out, he and Eastwood were slick to cast Bujold and her French-Canadian heritage as a native of the Franco-Anglo city of New Orleans.

I think Tuggle does contradict perhaps his armchair psychological exploration of Eastwood when he has him going to save Bujold, which arguably could be seen as an affirmation of traditional masculinity. The climax finale between Eastwood and the killer at the train tracks is the most uninteresting and boring sequence of TIGHTROPE, as if it went all Polanski FRANTIC on us in jobbing out. Then again, to TIGHTROPE's credit, how many pictures you know of where the action cinema is the least interesting?

TIGHTROPE is underrated, if like FRANTIC its a few notches short of being a special gem, but I say check it out, if only to see when Eastwood meets up with a gay escort. He asks Eastwood why he doesn't "partner" with guys for once, and Clint answers "Maybe I have." On paper, that may have read like a joke, but the way Eastwood said it in such a cryptic coded way......

Oh Shit! Now the Moral Majority have another reason to hate him.