Clint Eastwood is Walt Coogan, a deputy sheriff from Arizona on the loose in the urban jungle of New York. Searching for a violent prisoner he has let slip ("It's got kinda personal now"), Coogan, in Stetson and cowboy boots, runs up against hippies, social workers and a bluntly hostile New York police chief played by Lee J. Cobb. It's a key film in the Eastwood oeuvre, the one in which his ...
Clint Eastwood's stardom was supernova, thanks to Dirty Harry; John Sturges, the man behind The Magnificent Seven and a dozen other memorably leathery Westerns, was directing; and Elmore Leonard was the screenwriter. It just goes to show. Joe Kidd is a muddle and a drag, the shoddiest Eastwood vehicle since Rowdy Yates trod in his last cow flop. Kidd, first seen as a duded-up ...