My latest in PJ Media:
Hey, not all the news is bad: A new Clint Eastwood movie is coming out (Stephen Kruiser has details on it here, and Bryan Preston has more here). Back in the spring of 2019, I was laid up in the hospital for six weeks, and to get through the long hours of lying around not being able to do anything, I watched almost every movie Clint Eastwood has been in, all the way back to the mid-1960s. As I revisited Dirty Harry, The Outlaw Josey Wales, High Plains Drifter, Pale Rider, Gran Torino and so many others, I began to realize what Clint Eastwood’s most enduring contribution to American culture really is: He is a man. And as a man, he stands, and his body of work stands, as a monumental rebuke to the ethos of the Left today.
Although he famously debated Barack Obama’s empty chair at the 2012 Republican National Convention, Eastwood is not a doctrinaire conservative: He even endorsed the bumbling billionaire Michael Bloomberg in 2020, but his body of work makes that a forgivable lapse. Eastwood has singlehandedly done more to fight back against the Left’s war on masculinity than anyone else who has a high profile in the popular culture.
The characters he has played in so many movies are the polar opposite of the simpering pajama boy chugging down soy lattes and voting for Bernie and Old Joe. The Dirty Harry movies have for decades enraged the Left with Eastwood’s positive depiction of a cop who is disgusted by the coddling of criminals by Leftist politicians, and willing to do what is necessary to bring offenders to justice. The famed film critic Roger Ebert said prissily: “The movie’s moral position is fascist. No doubt about it.” Another renowned critic, Pauline Kael, agreed: “When you’re making a picture with Clint Eastwood, you naturally want things to be simple, and the basic contest between good and evil is as simple as you can get. It makes this genre piece more archetypal than most movies, more primitive and dreamlike; fascist medievalism has a fairy-tale appeal.” She added: “this action genre has always had a fascist potential, and it has finally surfaced.”
In reality, there is nothing either fascist or medieval about Dirty Harry. Leftists tend to call anything they don’t like “fascist,” but what Dirty Harry is really doing is showing one man’s frustration with the legalistic technicalities and loopholes that criminals and their defenders have exploited for a generation to enable the obviously guilty to walk free, and the tendency of Leftist authorities (think Kamala Harris) to focus on the rights of criminals even at the expense of the rights of their victims. Dirty Harry shows how dangerous the Left’s focus can be; that’s why Leftists hate it so passionately.
There is more. Read the rest here.
Keys says
Robert, you made my day !
bill says
Det. Tutuola in Law & Order has the same attitude, as do most of cops on the show
Emilie Green says
Don’t we wish?
“I know what you’re thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?”
Donovan Nuera says
“I gots to know!”
somehistory says
I would go all the way back to Rowdy Yates. He was young, but he had ethics. He wanted, and tried, to do the right thing. He respected women, he knew his job and he was loyal to his friends. And he wasn’t afraid to go against those in charge…even his own boss, Favor… if he thought he needed to in order to do the right thing.
He was sentimental in some episodes, and that smile was worth a million.
overman says
l think robert is referring to the new movie ‘Cry Macho’.
Looks good.
Plot:
“Based on the book, “Cry Macho” stars Clint Eastwood as a one-time rodeo star and washed-up horse breeder who, in 1978, takes a job from an ex-boss to bring the man’s young son home and away from his alcoholic mom. Crossing rural Mexico on their way back to Texas, the unlikely pair faces an unexpectedly challenging journey, during which the world-weary horseman may find his own sense of redemption through teaching the boy what it means to be a good man”.
gravenimage says
Why Leftists Hate Clint Eastwood So Much
……………..
Excellent stuff! Clint Eastwood is a fine filmmaker and actor.
He also did one of the very few Anti-Jihad films–“1513 to Paris” (probably a title nod to the famous Western “3:10 Yuma”). It is about three American friends, two of them in the military, who decide to vacation in Europe. Unarmed, they bravely foil a Jihad terror attack on this train.
This is true story–the Thalys train attack from 2015.
The heroes are played by the men themselves–and Eastwood gets fine performances out of these non-professionals.
The film may be a bit overlong–there is a lot of backstory–but this is a niggling critcism. This film is very good, exciting, and extremely heartening. I definitely recommend it.
A small not-so-important personal point–before moving to our current home, my husband and I lived in an apartment on a tiny two block street in Oakland near the lake where Clint Eastwood lived briefly as a boy.
Infidel says
Yeah, I was surprised that RS didn’t mention ‘1513 to Paris’. Although as Debbie Schlussel noted, that movie, good as it was, did have one major shortcoming: it avoided any mention of islam as the motivation for those terrorists
gravenimage says
This is true, Infidel, and is very unfortunate (and all too common). Despite this, I still recommend the movie highly.
Donald says
If you get the chance, watch Clint Eastwood debating with Barak Obama’s empty chair. American politicking aside, it is entertaining. I can’t remember seeing it on UK Left Leaning Media. One comment Eastwood makes, ” Biden is the intellect of the Democratic Party. Kind of a grin with a body behind it.”
Never a truer word spoken in jest”.
Why the ‘Left Hate Clint Eastwood so much’, I’d include all these Lefty WOKE people. Idiots!
James Lincoln says
I’m sure that we all have our favorite Clint Eastwood movies, but mine is an early one called:
“A Fistful of Dollars” (1964)
Parts of it are humorous, in a very strange sort of way…
somehistory says
The unnamed guy riding into town to help out the little people. I remember sitting in a dark theater and seeing that, and the follow-up, “A Few Dollars More.”
“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,”….I always thought it had two of the bad and two of the ugly. He just seemed so laid back throughout. And the music…some of the best.
tgusa says
The last scene in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. In the cemetery looking to find the gold, Blondie says to Tuco, “There are two types of people in the world, those with guns and those who dig.”
So timeless, and true.
That movie couldn’t be done today as it is three or more movies seamlessly applied in to one long movie. And that makes Sergio Leone and his team at the top of the great movie makers of all time.
Kesselman says
Speaking about Law & Order in popular culture the same ”concern” hit quality comics of the 1960s notably the square-jawed plain cloth of Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy. Phenomenally artistically drawn the comic conveyed storytelling showing the crooks’ bloody and deplorable death.—It was obvious too much for the upcoming leftwingers.—To the ”concerned” of today: Make My Day, Punk!
tgusa says
Last year I bought the Clint Eastwood 40 movie collection. I paid 71.96 for that. I also bought a Clint 4 movie Fistful of Dollars set, a 7 movie set, Escape from Alcatraz and In the Line of Fire. All of those together cost me 111.24 which was about 15 dollars less than what they want now for the 40 film collection alone. That equaled out to be about 2.10 for each movie. What a great deal.
One of my favorite Clint scenes is the triangular shootout scene between Blondie, Tuco and Angel Eyes at the end of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Blondie takes the bullets out of Tucos gun without Tuco realizing it and when they all draw Blondie shoots Angel Eyes dead. The look on Tucos face when he draws and tries to fire is classic.
somehistory says
“Josey Wales.” One of his all-time best, imo.