“It has some of the most exaggerated use of gunfire in a movie I’ve ever seen. An entire house is flattened like a pancake after bullets riddle it... and you’re left wondering where the heck they got all those bullets.”
The Gauntlet was an action thriller film released in 1977. It was directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack, and starred Clint Eastwood as Ben Shockley alongside Sondra Locke as “Gus” Mally. It is ultimately about a totally washed-up, hard-drinking detective who gets sent on a routine errand to escort a foul-mouthed prostitute from Las Vegas back to Phoenix to testify in a minor trial. He soon realizes the whole thing is a setup because she has dirt on a powerful mobster and high-ranking dirty cops. This forces the mismatched pair to go on the run across the desert in hijacked ambulances, motorcycles, and a heavily armored transit bus while literally thousands of police officers and mob hitmen try to blow them to pieces before they can reach city hall.
Moving right along on my Clint Eastwood directed-films marathon, this one... is interesting. That’s the best way to put it. It’s interesting.
You know how ridiculous the action is in Last Action Hero, where it’s almost cartoony in nature? That’s more or less what you get in The Gauntlet, minus the meta elements. A majority of the weirdness that makes The Gauntlet so hilarious is the use of guns. I’ve heard of never-ending ammunition before, but my god. Thousands of rounds of ammunition. They don’t stop shooting for anything. This film features some of the most exaggerated gunfire I’ve ever seen in a movie. They level a house. An entire house is flattened like a pancake after bullets riddle it... and that’s not an isolated incident. There are at least three or four different times where this happens, leaving you wondering where on earth they got all those bullets.
There also seems to be a debate online over whether this film was meant to be a comedy. Officially, sites like IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes list it strictly as an action crime thriller. However, unofficial coverage often argues the film was 110% intended as a satirical, tongue-in-cheek comedy... almost poking fun at Clint Eastwood’s own career up to that point. Typically, you’d get his gritty, no-nonsense hero rescuing damsels in distress. Here, you get the exact opposite: a down-on-his-luck, somewhat stupid drunk who couldn’t save himself from the flu, let alone anyone else. In fact, it’s the woman who is smarter and constantly saves him from the madness around them. To me, it feels like a spiritual precursor to Last Action Hero, except that movie was much more in-your-face and unapologetic about its tone. There was no question about its intent.
I think my main issue with The Gauntlet is that I’m constantly left wondering whether it’s actually meant to be funny.
Now, as a directorial note, this marks another first for Eastwood: it is the very first cop movie he ever directed. He would go on to direct several others later in his career, some of which are highly revered as his best work, but this was his first outing with the genre.
Narratively, the setup is as simple as it gets. It’s a movie about escorting a witness to a trial while a mountain of chaos happens on the road to stop them. Is it much more than that? Nope. Have we seen plenty of other movies follow those exact same beats? Sure, though maybe not as extravagantly or over-the-top as this.
The biggest question is... why should we care? That’s the hardest question for me to answer. It’s hardly a terrible film, and it’s enjoyable enough. If you look at it as a comedy, there’s plenty to laugh at and have a good time with, especially if you’re an Eastwood completist. But for a casual viewer who randomly stumbles across it? I don’t know if they’d get nearly as much out of it.
What this film really needed was a clear acknowledgment of its own humor. It needed to fully embrace the silliness and officially categorize itself as a comedy. One of the main reasons I doubt it was originally intended as one is that Clint Eastwood publicly stated he believed Sondra Locke wouldn’t just be nominated for an Oscar for her performance, but that she would win Best Actress. She wasn’t even nominated. If this had been pitched as a self-aware comedy, I just don’t see him making a statement like that.
Technical / Unbiased Score: 29/50 (58%)
Biased / Entertainment Score: 24/50 (48%)
Total Combined Score: 53/100 (53% | 2.5/5 on Letterboxd)