We were led to the Clint Eastwood drama The Gauntlet by its promo poster from Frank Frazetta, the generally agreed upon wizard of sword and sorcery art. We’ve featured him a little, such as here, here, and here. We didn’t know anything about the movie’s plot at all. We quickly found it, queued it up, and sat back to check out an Eastwood movie we hadn’t seen—a rarity.
He plays a gruff, rebellious cop sent to escort trial witness Sondra Locke from Las Vegas to Phoenix by plane. When mobsters try to kill her via various unlikely means, his transportation options—which quickly range through an ambulance, a rental car, and a motorcycle—are finally reduced to a bus that he packs with plate steel to make it bulletproof.
The Gauntlet was Eastwood’s eighth directorial effort, and was voted one of the year’s worst films by the Phoenix Film Critics Society. We don’t think it’s that bad, but it certainly isn’t very good. It hits some stupidly broad notes, such as when an empty liquor bottle falls out of Eastwood’s car to let us know he likes to drink, and a bunch of bikers are driven to attempt rape after being called “fairies.”
In addition, the mobsters’ attempts to knock off Locke are a bit ridiculous, and the traitor in the plot is obvious by minute eight. Still, the movie is Clint in full grunt-and-grimace mode and that’s worth something. During filming each take he was probably: “Okay, cut! Let’s do another, and I’ll crinkle my eyes more this time.” As the saying goes, you do you. Mainly we wanted to share the above piece by Frazetta. It’s a reminder to us that we should feature him more.
