jminer

Ken Kesey's novel is narrated by Chief Bromden, who reminisces lyrically about the Columbia River country where he grew up. He also has insights into what is going on in the hospital, such as microphones in the broom handles, and machinery within the walls. But, then, he is a patient in a mental hospital. So that's our narrator, a paranoid schizophrenic. One of the features of film is that the camera is objective. A few directors have tried to create a subjective camera, most obviously by giving it the point of view of the main character or even the narrator. I seem to remember an Alan Ladd vehicle, The Lady in the Lake I think it was. But audiences generally trust the camera's objectivity. So instead of getting this story from a paranoid schizophrenic mental patient, the film gives it to us as objective truth. That the central message of freedom comes across is a tribute to Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher in particular. But there is a dimension missing, and to my mind it is Kesey's implication that America is a madhouse, and the only sane people might be those considered by the society to be mad. Maybe others see that implication but, having read the book before the film was released, I find the certainty of the narration undermines that dimension.

Eastwood has a penchant for styling films way beyond the naturalistic but audiences have an even stronger habit of seeing anything to do with cowboys or cops as necessarily naturalistic. They want realism, Eastwood wants them to see past that to the issues at work. Audiences - and the reviews here on IMDB support me on this - want characters who are amusing or interesting: in Eastwood's high style, the characters represent points of view, philosophies or, in the case of his heroes, principles.

This high style finds its expression in Pale Rider and High Plains Drifter, where the hero has no clear identity. Each story is about a man with no name. He is what he does, in a manner very reminiscent of the two directors who appear to have influenced Eastwood the most, Leone and Kurosawa.

The highly stylised cop in The Gauntlet doesn't appear out of nowhere. In film terms, he begins in Don Siegel's Dirty Harry. People seem to enjoy taking Harry literally - but I think the film works better if you look at what Harry represents rather than who he is.

And so it is with Shockley in The Gauntlet. He represents the American Everyman, the guy who is going to get the job done. He has his flaws: he's not too bright; he drinks too much. He gets paid bupkis and he's not going to win any promotion. But he's honest. And his "superiors" aren't.

He could be Gary Cooper in Meet John Doe, or James Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life. Frank Capra didn't make those films naturalistic: the private militia of DB Norton in John Doe, Doe's willingness to come back and commit suicide on Christmas Eve; Clarence the angel in Wonderful Life: did anybody ever pretend they were realistic? They are great films presented in a very non-realistic way.

The high point of the gauntlet is, of course, the gauntlet that Shockley has to run. Actually he trundles through it, as slowly as possible, and this seems to offend some viewers who think it's dumb. They just don't get it: it's a protest.

It is a protest that persuades the masses, ie the Phoenix police officers who, initially reluctant to fire upon one of their own, put down their weapons en masse as Shockley survives, in recognition of the fact that he represents the cops they want to be rather than the tools of corruption they sense they have become. His corrupt chief is left alone, futile, and despised as they group around him, in a victory for principle.

It's a daring way to present a moral tale, wrapping it inside a cop movie and giving none of the clues - an angel, for example - that scream "not realism" at the audience. It deserves better recognition.

It also deserved better than Sondra Locke as the prostitute more worthy of Shockley's protection than his corrupt boss, and Pat Hingle as his morally inept friend. William Prince, however, is chillingly brilliant as the centre of corruption. (Old principle of story-telling: a hero is only as great as the villain challenges him to be.)

Unfortunately, this level of movie-making also deserved a story that hasn't been done so many times before.

Why anybody would want to retell the story of Charles Starkweather so many years after the events that made him notorious is beyond my comprehension.

Perhaps it was just meant to be a character study: Tim Roth dominates the entire show as a passionate, capricious, and utterly fascinating Starkweather.

The film disturbs me because I doubt that the real Starkweather was so interesting. Contemporary accounts suggest he was a sociopath unable to calibrate his responses to all those negative situations of life: envy, frustration, depression. The director has done a great job; the question is, why.

While this film is not well known compared with Pulp Fiction, even Rob Roy, Roth's performance is spellbinding - at least as good as his role in Reservoir Dogs.

It deserves to be seen, as a landmark of late 20th century, one of the really great performances by an actor, rather than a star turn by an overhyped PR product.