The Gauntlet

THE GAUNTLET (18)

D: Clint Eastwood

Warner Bros/Malpaso (Robert Daley)

USA 🇺🇸 1977

109 mins

Action/Thriller

W: Michael Butler & Dennis Shryack

DP: Redford L. Metz

Ed: Joel Cox & Ferris Webster

Mus: Jerry Fielding

Clint Eastwood (Ben Shockley), Sondra Locke (Gus Malley), Pat Hingle (Josephson), William Prince (Blakelock), Michael Cavanaugh (Feyderspiel), Bill McKinney (Constable)

A rather humdrum action-thriller from director & star Clint Eastwood, with an all too familiar plot that could have been written on a napkin and still left plenty of room for a shopping list.

Eastwood stars as a surly detective who must transport a hooker across state lines so she can testify against the mob, but the two become targets for both criminals and the police as they take to the road.

It's a theme which has been done so many times before and since and there's nothing particularly remarkable here. Even the acting performances are phoned in, as though the actors just did it for a quick and easy buck. This is particularly detrimental to the movie, since not for one second did I believe that the main characters were in any real peril.

Narrow Margin & Midnight Run have variations on the same theme, and both are much better films.

4/10