{"id":8509,"date":"2024-11-18T23:38:02","date_gmt":"2024-11-19T04:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=8509"},"modified":"2024-11-18T23:38:02","modified_gmt":"2024-11-19T04:38:02","slug":"the-gauntlet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/18\/the-gauntlet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gauntlet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Gauntlet<\/strong> (1977)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 111 minutes Rated R (strong violence including rape, language, nudity, sexual references, alcohol abuse)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Clint Eastwood\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jerry Fielding\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Rexford L. Metz\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 21, 1977 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Cast: Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Pat Hingle, William Prince, Bill McKinney, Michael Cavanaugh, Carole Cook, Mara Corday, Doug McGrath, Jeff Morris, Samantha Doane, Roy Jenson, Dan Vadis, Carver Barnes.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $26.4M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Although they\u2019re both played by Clint Eastwood, cops Harry Callahan and Ben Shockley are as different as night and day. Dirty Harry cares enough about the law to thumb his nose at the book of rules he\u2019s supposed to play by in order to catch the bad guys. Shockley doesn\u2019t even bother to glance at the cover. Besides, it\u2019s too big a book to fit inside the bottle he climbed into at some point in his career. He\u2019s the dubious hero of The Gauntlet<\/strong>, a preposterous actioner that fits comfortably into the \u201cgood not great\u201d category of Eastwood flicks. As director, Eastwood balances exciting action scenes against a sketchy plot involving dirty cops and the Mafia.<\/p>\n

Shockley, a burnt-out alcoholic who approaches his job with indifference, gets assigned witness detail by his new commanding officer Blakelock (Prince, Assassination). He\u2019s to go to Las Vegas and retrieve a \u201cnothing witness\u201d to testify in a \u201cnothing trial\u201d. Said witness is Augusta \u201cGus\u201d Mally (Locke, The Outlaw Josey Wales), a hooker who isn\u2019t the most cooperative person in the world. In fact, she\u2019s a royal pain in the ass. She has incriminating information on somebody important; it\u2019s pertinent to the trial. It seems like a simple enough task, right? WRONG! Is it ever simple?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Gus is too terrified to even leave her cell. She tries to warn Shockley off claiming he\u2019ll be killed too if he tries to carry out his assignment. Of course, he\u2019s not having any of it. That is, until he finds out the Mob has placed odds on Gus making it to Phoenix alive. Undeterred but concerned, he tries to secret her away from the police station only for the bad guys to make their first of several attempts on their lives. On top of that, the cops are after them too. Determined to buck the odds, Shockley goes above and beyond the call of duty in his efforts to deliver the witness alive.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Gauntlet<\/strong> contains a few bravura action sequences like the scene where the entire Las Vegas police force converges on Gus\u2019s house and cuts loose with a barrage of bullets that literally brings the house down. There\u2019s a chase where a helicopter fires on them on a motorcycle. The climax, in which Shockley and Gus drive to the courthouse in an armored bus through a gauntlet of cops firing on them, is cool. Their ordeal also includes a run-in with a vicious gang of bikers that ends with Shockley appropriating one of their motorcycles.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The relationship between Shockley and Gus follows a familiar trajectory. They start out hating each other. It, of course, turns into something else as the movie progresses. I\u2019d believe it more if Locke wasn\u2019t such a horrible actress. She can\u2019t act her way out of a wet paper bag. That she was dating Eastwood at the time explains why she got the part. It\u2019s too bad because her character is interesting. Gus is no dumb broad. She\u2019s a college graduate who easily holds her own against a redneck cop making lewd remarks. In the hands of a better actress, she\u2019d be a great match\/foil for Eastwood\u2019s character. We\u2019re so used to seeing the actor play heroic-type characters; it\u2019s a shock to the system when he plays one like Shockley who isn\u2019t so heroic. He goes a good job in the role. The problem is his character isn\u2019t afforded any depth. What brought him to the state he\u2019s in? We never find out.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Shallow characterization isn\u2019t the movie\u2019s only problem. The pacing is uneven. It has a few slow stretches. Due to the Law of Economy of Characters, it\u2019s not hard picking out the bad guy(s) on the police force. As such, we cringe when Shockley\u2019s old partner (Hingle, Sudden Impact) takes crucial information to a person we know is corrupt. If we can see it, why can\u2019t he? BTW, given certain conventions of the genre, you can probably guess what happens to him before the end credits roll.<\/p>\n

\u00a0While The Gauntlet<\/strong> isn\u2019t exactly a shining moment for Eastwood as an actor or director, it\u2019s a reasonably entertaining action flick with more gunfire than some Civil War battles. Not a minute of it is even remotely believable. It\u2019s dumb; it\u2019s junk food for the brain. It\u2019s a decent Saturday night action movie.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Gauntlet (1977)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 111 minutes Rated R (strong violence including rape, language, nudity, sexual references, alcohol abuse)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Clint Eastwood\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jerry Fielding\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Rexford L. Metz\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 21, 1977 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Cast: Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Pat Hingle, William Prince, Bill McKinney, Michael Cavanaugh, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure","category-kick-ass-actioners"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/The-Gauntlet-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8509"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8761,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8509\/revisions\/8761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}