Post by Eddie Love on Dec 7, 2010 20:31:05 GMT -5
A lesser-known Clint Eastwood Western and – I think – the only original Elmore Leonard screenplay is JOE KIDD. Directed by John Sturges and released in 1972 it’s a not a groundbreaker, but Clint is so effing cool, you won’t care.
When the film opens Clint as Joe Kidd is seen sans his customary serape, but rather duded out in a city slicker’s suit and with a bowler hat and languishing in a jail cell. He’s hauled before a judge to face disorderly conduct charges at the same time that fiery Mexican rabble-rouser John Saxon bursts in demanding…well…I’m not sure what, as Saxon’s accent is so thick he’s almost completely unintelligible. Saxon and his outlaw gang shoot up the courthouse and then take to the hills, but not before Clint smokes one of his men in one of the first awesomely cool moves we see from Eastwood in this picture. Soon slick, land baron Robert Duvall shows up with a hunting party and he wants Kidd to help him hunt Saxon down. Joe agrees, and the rest of the film finds him variously battling both factions.
There’s something generally kind of listless or perfunctory about JOE KIDD. Essentially shot on just two small Western town sets, it feels pretty low budget, and could almost pass for a TV episode from the era, albeit one with a terrific Lalo Schifrin score. It’s not one of Sturges’ classics, but it’s informed with his usual skillful style and cast with the same high standard as all his pictures. Duvall’s band are all good, and he himself suggests one of those unhinged control-freaks he’s adept at. (This was a busy year for him as he was also cast in some gangster picture that came out around the same time. Speaking of which, there are scenes towards the end where he stalks around with a rifle hunting for Clint and with his long hair all askew he looks a lot like John Cazale in DOG DAY AFTERNOON.)
But this is Eastwood’s show and it’s one of his coolest performances from this period in his career. He’s less passive than he is in some of his earlier Western roles, and, in fact, displays plenty of deft ironic wit. And I mean seriously funny. The scenes of Joe getting the best of Duvall’s men (particularly one bit with a jug on a rope…just…trust me) are flat-out, laugh out loud riotous. He’s deadpan and deadly.
Like a lot of Leonard’s Westerns, there’s an undercurrent examining racist attitudes from the period, but these portraits usually cut both ways and didn’t shy away from including some villainous or exploitative members of the oppressed peoples of the time. In fact, here there’s maybe too much of a hint that the docile Mexicans are wholly preferable to those more radical members of their community looking for payback, that’s a little hard to take by today’s standards. (As is the unusually high amount of gun fetishism on display.)
But still, all told, JOE KIDD is enjoyable if perhaps a little unremarkable. But if you’re looking to get your Clint high, look no further.