The challenge of playing the cop, Ben Shockley, in "The Gauntlet" was that the character was virtually the opposite of Harry Callaghan: he's a loser, a man resigned to doing twenty years in the force and then looking forward to collecting his pension
His car is full of empty whiskey bottles, his life is a shambles, he's never even been given a big case let alone solved one
He is sent from Phoenix to Las Vegas to 'bring back a nothing witness for a nothing trial'.
The 'nothing' witness, Gus Mally, is not the man he expects; in the first place she's a woman, Augusta Mally, secondly she's a hooker, thirdly, despite her non-stop profanities, she's a graduate of Finch College and lastly and hereby hangs the tale she's not a 'nothing witness'. The mob who are to be tried will do anything to prevent her testifying
The dangers inherent in their journey together only slow1y become apparent to Shockley despite the fact that the Vegas police literally raze to the ground the couple's initial hideaway, while they remain inside almost to the last moment
Within the turbulent situation, Shockley and Mally manage to transform their original dislike for each other and each other's way of life into a love of sorts, in the 'African Queen type tradition.' As the couple begins to understand each other, they realize how their relationship could serve each other She would no longer need to be a whore He could regain his self-esteem as a policeman Shortly before the final showdown Mally telephones her mother to say she has found her man; from then on there is an added imperative that they survive in order to give their love and their relationship a chance to work out
Sondra Locke achieved the improbably-written transformation from hooker to sociologist convincingly But in this film, more than ever, Eastwood wasn't trying for any praise or approval from the critics; probably the reverse The overkill is part of the entertainment' he claimed.' You just have to accept it on an outrageous level.' There were those who didn't
But these comments only served to inform Eastwood that at least he had been excessive enough to upset some people It would be awful to think you're being outrageous and to outrage nobody But Eastwood knew just how far he could take an audience with him By surviving the unsurvivable, Eastwood proved to himself once more that the mass audience will suspend all sensible disbelief as they do in the best of the Bond films providing the action carries them and their fantasies along
In the context of many of his other films, "The Gauntlet" is hardly one of Eastwood's most substantial works The appeal of an unlikely love affair between opposites, fertilized by an unceasing barrage of gunfire was undoubted1y considerable But as a whole, the film tended to operate rather as an exercise in special effects than as any more considered piece of social statement of the kind that gave such strength to "Dirty Harry."
The 'nothing' witness, Gus Mally, is not the man he expects; in the first place she's a woman, Augusta Mally, secondly she's a hooker, thirdly, despite her non-stop profanities, she's a graduate of Finch College and lastly and hereby hangs the tale she's not a 'nothing witness'. The mob who are to be tried will do anything to prevent her testifying
The dangers inherent in their journey together only slow1y become apparent to Shockley despite the fact that the Vegas police literally raze to the ground the couple's initial hideaway, while they remain inside almost to the last moment
Within the turbulent situation, Shockley and Mally manage to transform their original dislike for each other and each other's way of life into a love of sorts, in the 'African Queen type tradition.' As the couple begins to understand each other, they realize how their relationship could serve each other She would no longer need to be a whore He could regain his self-esteem as a policeman Shortly before the final showdown Mally telephones her mother to say she has found her man; from then on there is an added imperative that they survive in order to give their love and their relationship a chance to work out
Sondra Locke achieved the improbably-written transformation from hooker to sociologist convincingly But in this film, more than ever, Eastwood wasn't trying for any praise or approval from the critics; probably the reverse The overkill is part of the entertainment' he claimed.' You just have to accept it on an outrageous level.' There were those who didn't
But these comments only served to inform Eastwood that at least he had been excessive enough to upset some people It would be awful to think you're being outrageous and to outrage nobody But Eastwood knew just how far he could take an audience with him By surviving the unsurvivable, Eastwood proved to himself once more that the mass audience will suspend all sensible disbelief as they do in the best of the Bond films providing the action carries them and their fantasies along
In the context of many of his other films, "The Gauntlet" is hardly one of Eastwood's most substantial works The appeal of an unlikely love affair between opposites, fertilized by an unceasing barrage of gunfire was undoubted1y considerable But as a whole, the film tended to operate rather as an exercise in special effects than as any more considered piece of social statement of the kind that gave such strength to "Dirty Harry."