Coogan's Bluff
(1968)
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This fish-out-of-water film was the beginning of a long association between Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood, who stars as the eponymous deputy sheriff from Arizona. The cowboy-cop is sent to New York City to extradite escaped murderer James Ringerman (Don Stroud), only to be told by police lieutenant McElroy (Lee J. Cobb) that the killer is recovering from an acid trip at Bellevue Hospital and can be released only with his doctors' approval. After some low-key flirtation with probation officer Julie Roth (Susan Clark), Coogan decides to take the bull by the horns and tricks Ringerman's Bellevue attendants into releasing him. However, on the way to the airport, the Arizona-bound cop is waylaid by Ringerman's amusingly wacked-out girlfriend, Linny (Tisha Sterling), and beaten senseless by a goon, allowing his prisoner to escape. Later, while in Julie's apartment, he surreptitiously extracts Linny's file to get her address and tracks her to an Electric Circus-like club whose habitues he regards with utter disdain. An amusing action film, COOGAN'S BLUFF makes much of the irony of the laconic Old West, with Eastwood being equally put off by both the bureaucratically hamstrung cops and the acid-fueled hippies. |
Clint Eastwood still wore a cowboy hat in his first attempt to move from the western landscape into the contemporary urban setting, but under Don Siegel's taut direction he carried off the switch successfully. In many ways the forerunner of Dirty Harry, Eastwood's laconic Arizona sheriff tracking down a murderer in Manhattan was his first character to get upset by big-city sleaze and escalating crime. This stylish and gritty crime drama set the seal on Eastwood's screen persona for decades to come and later inspired the McCloud TV series.