Tightrope

I truly consider Tightrope to be by far one of Eastwood's best acting performances. He definitely DID deserve, that year, at least an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. And don't be mistaken, Wes Block has nothing to do with Dirty Harry ... true, these two cops both have their "dark side" -an aspect that Eastwood has learned to exploit in a number of his pictures, BUT Wes Block appears to be much more "human" than Harry. This single father is struggling with his own demons, persuaded that until now he has screwed up about everything in his life, beginning with his marriage ... he's trying real hard to be a good father, as well as a good cop, that is until this killer comes along and threatens all he's been fighting for to preserve.

Here we get to know a guy who's extremely vulnerable, hurt, un-self confident, haunted and whose relationship with women remains ambiguous, based on control, kind of as if he was afraid of them, of what they could do to him, seeing them as a threat ... hence his resort to the services of prostitutes and his use of handcuffs on them.

As usual in Eastwood's movies, we wanna know what's underneath this front his characters put on ... -like in Pale Rider, Josey Wales, The Bridges of Madison County ... the silences, the puzzling, haunting, deep looks, that tell us far more about a character than any word would. "Less is more" is definitely a guideline of this movie. Most of the time, Eastwood's characters reveal themselves through their silences, and it's particularly true here.

I believe there's a line in Tightrope that sums up pretty accurately what Eastwood's movies are really about: "I'm not sure how close I wanna get ..." They're about very private men struggling with life.

This movie is simply one of his best.

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.

TightRope is a very accurate name for this picture, the most interesting aspect of which is Eastwood's attempts to balance his duties as a responsible and loving father with his taste for deviant sex. This latter he shares with the serial killer he is pursuing. The killer has a penchant for strangling his victims with ribbons which I guess is another meaning for "tight rope".

Eastwood's character is very well fleshed out and his desire to provide a safe and normal home life for his daughters and later to establish a relationship with a rape defence adviser he is attracted to, is very believable. While this is happening, he is drawn deeper and deeper into the dark world of bondage and sado-masochism and there is for a long time some doubt as to which way he will fall and even that he may know more about the killings than he admits.

All this is very compellingly handled.

Unfortunately the villain is straight out of central casting. A one-dimensional cardboard cut-out who the film makers attempt to give some mystery to by having him wear masks. Yawn. Unlike Eastwood, this villain is poorly drawn and apart from an uncharacteristic appearance at the start, is completely silent. He just swans around in the shadows a-la the phantom of the opera and has little of the sense of personality even of Scorpio in Dirty Harry.

There is no real reason why he should be masked, actually, since he is an undistinguished looking character, and stalking around with an assortment of facial coverings is more likely to draw attention to himself if anything. One must believe that this oddly disguised person can enter and leave buildings (such as brothels - highly security conscious in the real world) without anyone noticing. Or perhaps he goes in unmasked and whips out his disguise later? Who knows? If the latter, why bother with the disguise at all? It certainly has not been thought out and is a very cheap attempt to create a sense of intrigue and danger.

Its a pity because the constant appearance of this silly villain actually detracts from the menace and darkness of this film. Without him, there would be real doubt as to whether Eastwood was really the killer himself, for instance. I do not think I give anything away in saying this, since the clunking villain is seen stalking Eastwood from quite early on, hovering behind him or looking in the skylight, so much so that you feel like shouting "He's behind you!" in a pantomime sort of way.

Other details do not ring true, such as Eastwood telling a young male hooker to go to a warehouse to be paid by the killer then going there himself to find (surprise! Surprise!) the hooker hanging by his neck. Cheap and unrealistic writing like this add to the schlock horror feel.

All this leads to a routine and unnecessarily gory finale. However, a touching moment with his girlfriend shows that the film makers do understand subtlety.

"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.