Unfortunately, it's also possible to give Eastwood way too much credit. Staying power and an ongoing willingness to surprise less adventurous audience members isn't the same thing as appearing in tons of great films. There's no ignoring the fact that our man Clint is very often the best thing about slow, overly schematic pictures that seem to have been stamped out on an assembly line. Richard Tuggle's Tightrope, a recent Warner Video DVD release, is a prime example of Eastwood confounding our expectations in a movie that's not much better than an R-rated episode of McCloud.
Eastwood plays Wes Block, a divorced New Orleans detective who's struggling to raise his two young daughters (including Eastwood's real-life daughter, Alison) on his own. Wes spends a lot of time investigating grisly murders in the seedier corners of this hard-partying town, so he ultimately has trouble establishing intimate relations of his own. He's taken to visiting prostitutes to relieve his anxieties, and the sex sessions have gotten out of hand. Suffice it to say that he doesn't leave his handcuffs at the police station when he's off-duty. Soon, he's on the trail of a serial killer who, unbeknownst to the rest of the force, is knocking off women of dubious character who have been involved with Brock.
If the studio had had the guts to pursue this perverse storyline, Tightrope could have been genuinely disturbing. But concessions were obviously made so Eastwood's core audience wouldn't balk (they balked anyway, but that's another story.)
What Tuggle ended up with is a very disappointing Kinky lite, a movie about one man's sexual darkness that couldn't even offend Middle America. Some of the theoretically tawdry sexual hijinks are embarrassing, including a bout of woman-on-woman oil-wrestling at a strip club that looks like an Animal House outtake. There's also a rape activist/love interest (Genevieve Bujold) whose self-defense classes involve a dummy with eyes that light up when she kicks it in the tennis balls. It lets out a little electronic groan and its tongue sticks out at the moment of impact. I'm not making this up.
Outside of that dummy, which appears to have not been store-bought, there's very little originality on display here. The killer is repeatedly presented as a set of shoes stalking yet another victim while a cheesy synthesizer chord announces his unstoppable evil, and Eastwood's tired banter with his precocious kids hardly qualifies as comic relief.
Tightrope is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. There are no glaring drawbacks to the print itself, or to the Dolby 5.1 soundtrack. However, some critics at the time of the film's release complained that Bruce Surtees' cinematography was too dark, and, film noir trappings or not, that's often the case. Some of the scenes appear to be playing out in a funhouse tunnel rather than the streets of New Orleans. Only the presence of Lennie Niehaus's overbearing, jazz-based score would suggest otherwise. The only extras are a trailer and a little bit of info on Eastwood's career.
For more information about Tightrope, visit Warner Video. To order Tightrope, go to TCM Shopping.
by Paul Tatara
