Tightrope

Inner darkness is out of control in this thriller set in New Orleans. A veteran cop(Clint Eastwood)is put in peril when evidence links him to the serial murders he is investigating. Genevieve Bujold co-stars. Twelve year old Alison Eastwood plays one of the cop's two daughters, and surprisingly holds her own. This shady thriller is worth your time. The pace is a little slow, but very intense. Some pretty cool sets and mellow jazz. Don't get too relaxed.

...in a dark and unsettling psychological thriller. Directed by Clint's protégé Richard Tuggle (who wrote the screenplay to the earlier Siegel-Eastwood classic ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ (1979), the film's first half is uncertain and suffers from clichéd (albeit well staged and visualised) New Orleans locations - shady whorehouse dives, red light tinged bars and over officious police procedural rooms and locker-room banter.

The plot itself is functional but nothing special: a serial killer with a penchant for young, pretty blondes, is terrorising the city by disposing of prostitutes by strangling them and dumping the bodies all over the city. The twist in TIGHTROPE is that the killer is also dogging the footsteps of kinky cop Detective Wes Block (Eastwood), a lonely divorcée with two young children. Block eases off the shackles of a tough day job by frequenting the very same sleazy dives that his thoroughly unpleasant nemesis does.

A predictable game of cat and mouse ensues, but the film's stock film noir origins are transcended by Eastwood's continual playing with his own star status and by a very interesting exploration of his character's private obsessions and genuinely touching relationship with his two young daughters. Special mention here for real-life daughter Alison Eastwood, quite superb as the older and more perceptive girl, who clearly suspects her troubled father is up to more than just "looking for something" on his late night travels through New Orleans's seamier districts.

The more conventional opening section of TIGHTROPE is distinctly misleading, largely because about half way through, the film's most interesting character (played by the truly excellent GENEVIEVE BUJOLD) comes much more to the fore. As the feisty and fiercely intelligent Rape Crisis Center head Beryl Thibodeaux (nice use of Bujold's French-Canadian heritage here for a movie set in New Orleans!) Bujold's sharp dialogue exchanges with ultra macho Detective Wes Block-Clint Eastwood are a constant joy, and, of course, edge us deeper into film noir territory as Block's kinky sexual practise and failed marriage become the focus of the investigation.

Tuggle does a generally excellent job of keeping the material visually interesting, although he pays less attention to the minor characters, wasting a great character actor like Dan Hedaya for the role of Block's sidekick on the investigation. Overall though, this is an underrated film in the Eastwood canon and worthy of your attention. It's a slick genre piece with a surprising ability to probe the areas of Eastwood's star persona not normally explored in the Dirty Harry series.

"Tightrope" could have been a fascinating character study. Eastwood plays a somewhat kinky cop who has almost nothing in common with Dirty Harry; he is a much more believable character here, and his performance is superb. Unfortunately, the direction lacks the necessary vigor - it fails to increase the level of tension as it should - and the film becomes more sleepy as it approaches its end. Even with Clint at his best, this film's second half is almost deadening.

"Tightrope" is indicative of how veteran star Clint Eastwood has so often been willing to take chances with his film vehicles. Here Clint plays Wes Block, a New Orleans detective investigating the case of a sexual predator. The case gets more personal when both cop and killer realize that they're not so different. Wes, you see, does like to frequent after hours joints, and he's a known customer to some French Quarter ladies.

While not altogether successful - it lacks the style and tension to make it something truly special - it is, at the least, a fairly interesting character study, of a character who's not squeaky clean. We see Wes' happy home life - he's a single father to two girls, and owner of several dogs - contrasting with the less appealing aspects of his existence. Writer / director Richard Tuggle, who'd scripted the earlier Clint vehicle "Escape from Alcatraz", does his best to give us a film that attempts to take a look at the "dark within all of us". There's even a line to that effect, spoken by a minor character played by Janet MacLachlan.

We do see the psycho (character actor Marco St. John, "Friday the 13th: A New Beginning", "Thelma & Louise") in the act of stalking a woman right from the get go, so there's no mystery about what he looks like. That does put a crimp in the suspense.

Clint does well in this unconventional hero role, doing solid work as always. He co-stars with his real life daughter Alison, and Jennifer Beck, as his kids, the typically excellent Dan Hedaya as his partner, and Genevieve Bujold as a tough talking counsellor at a rape centre, who naturally places herself in harms' way by becoming involved with Wes.

Where the film is its strongest is in its depiction of N.O., capturing the night life in an American city known for its atmosphere.

Not a great film by any means, but worth a look for Clint fans.

Seven out of 10.

TIGHTROPE is a decent, though not entirely flawless, dramatic thriller. Clint stars as a hard-nosed detective (does he play any other kind?) trying to figure out who's behind a string of murders in New Orleans. But these aren't just any murders, as the female victims were all part of the wonderful world of kinky sex. Our hero's mean squint gets even squintier when it becomes obvious the women are being targeted because of their kinky relations with him.

Released in 1984, TIGHTROPE was a reasonable success in terms of revenue and critical acclaim. Maybe you just had to see it when it first came out, because watching it today, it seems like a fairly formulaic cop thriller. That doesn't mean it's bad; far from it. It's reasonably paced, not entirely predictable and nicely buffered with some cute (sometimes hilarious) father-daughter moments (Clint's real-life offspring, Alison, plays one of his two girls). Add an extra star if you're a fan of the big C.