Best movie of this year hands down!

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

"The Gauntlet" is an action film that works best if you don't expect very much from it. It's not a Dirty Harry film nor does the film make a lot of sense...especially at the very end. Nevertheless, for Clint Eastwood fans it probably packs enough in it to make them happy...all others consider twice before watching.Eastwood had just finished making his third Dirty Harry film when he then made "The Gauntlet". I am sure many expected to see the self- confident and murderous officer Callahan once again, but his Ben Shockley in "The Gauntlet" is in many ways very much unlike Callahan. He's a drunk, a lousy cop and someone no one would expect much from...hence this is why he was chosen for a special assignment. The Police Commissioner (William Prince) wants Shockley to go to Vegas to bring in a prisoner who is expected to testify in a mob case. However, it soon becomes obvious no one wants him to bring the girl (Sondra Locke) back alive...and the Vegas and Phoenix police forces are itching to kill them both.So why do I only give this one a 5? Well, the film is pretty much mindless action much of the time, but the reason for this relatively low score for a Clint Eastwood film is the ending...an ending which seems incredibly fake and silly. All semblance to reality seems to vanish and the ending is basically intended to satisfy the primal, not the intellectual. Pretty silly ending...as is the bizarro romance.

"The Gauntlet" isn't one of Clint Eastwood's most important films but judged on its own merits, it is an entertaining film. Sandra Locke does well as the witness who is being put into protective custody, so that she can testify against corruption in the police force and in the D.A's office. There follows a long journey for Clint Eastwood and Sandra Locke as they encounter many a danger before they reach the safety of the courts. The action is good in this one.

The Gauntlet (1977)Plot In A Paragraph: A cop (Eastwood) is assigned to escort a prostitute (Sondra Locke) into custody from Las Vegas to Phoenix, so that she can testify in a mob trial. But a lot of people are literally betting that they won't make it into town alive.Assuming joint actor/director responsibilities for a fifth occasion, Clint Eastwood directed himself and Outlaw Josie Wales costar Sondra Locke in what essentially is a screwball comedy masquerading as an action adventure.The pacing of the movie is tight, the dialogue cracking with crude insults and snappy banter and the action is well staged too. Ben Shockley is no Harry Callaghan (even if they both share s downbeat sense of humour and a grumpy temperament) as unlike the dynamic and instinctive Harry Callaghan, who is always in control and always ready for action, Shockley is an underachieving Buffoon, slow on his feet and slow on the uptake, and blind to the corruption in the police force. Sondra Locke so cute and vulnerable in The Outlaw Josie Wales, does a complete turn around as Gus Mally is feisty and foul mouthed. Once again her character is the victim of a sexual assault. Like Dirty Harry and Kate Moore in The Enforcer, Shockley and Mally are at odds from the start, but slowly and inevitably they earn to each other during the course of the movie. After a decent sized role in The Outlaw Josey Wales, Malpaso regular Bill McKinney was back to a smaller role as a lewd constable. Pat Hingle also has a small but memorable role as Shockleys former partner and William Prince is fine as Blakelock.Once again Jerry Fielding (his third Eastwood movie in a row) does a great job of composing the score, and I need to add this movie has a great poster. The Gauntlet grossed $35 mill at the domestic Box Office to end 1977 as the 14th highest grossing movie of the year.

It's difficult to believe the stories that have arisen over the years involving numerous top Hollywood players vying for a chance to appear in or direct this action vehicle: the turgid, one-dimensional, inane screenplay by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack would seem to mitigate any interest from the likes of Streisand, Kristofferson, McQueen, MacGraw or Peckinpah. A boozing, faded police detective in Phoenix is assigned to pick up a prisoner in Las Vegas and escort them back to Arizona to testify in a trial; he has no idea what trial the police commissioner is talking about, nor he does he realize that the prisoner, "Gus", is a woman (much ado is made about the gender flip-flop, for no apparent purpose). Oddsmakers in Vegas are already betting the pair will never get across the state line alive, which causes the cop to ask this lady--a hooker, naturally--why everyone wants them dead (her story, something about the mob and the commissioner and a kinky sex act, is barely intelligible). The noisy action, sloppily-staged by director and star Clint Eastwood, consists mainly of thousands of rounds of gunfire decimating a house, a constable's car and a stolen bus (when the police shoot up the car, why doesn't anyone bother to look inside for victims or open the trunk?). Eastwood's relationship with college-educated prostitute Sondra Locke seems to bloom off-screen: she screams, he squints, but love is in the air! Locke has a lengthy phone-monologue where she talks to her mother which, I'm guessing, is supposed to substitute for character content. Eastwood stays in a guttural low-key, somewhere between his disc jockey from "Play Misty For Me" and his other cop, "Dirty" Harry Callahan. They look good together riding on a chopper in the desert, but it would be impossible for anyone to care about these characters or whether or not they make it to City Hall unscathed. *1/2 from ****