Perfectly adorable

Great Film overall

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

"The Gauntlet" isn't one of Clint Eastwood's most important films but judged on its own merits, it is an entertaining film. Sandra Locke does well as the witness who is being put into protective custody, so that she can testify against corruption in the police force and in the D.A's office. There follows a long journey for Clint Eastwood and Sandra Locke as they encounter many a danger before they reach the safety of the courts. The action is good in this one.

Clint Eastwood stars as Ben Shockley, a gruff, tough maverick cop (natch!) who is given the task of extraditing Las Vegas hooker Gus Malley (Sondra Locke) to Phoenix, where she is to testify at a mob trial. Unfortunately for Ben, the mob have connections in the police force, and what seems like a simple job at first turns into a fight for survival against the odds.It would be easy to fault The Gauntlet for its incredibly dumb premise—the finale, in which Shockley and Malley must run a gauntlet of heavily armed police in order to reach city hall is preposterous in the extreme—but a lack of credibility is actually the least of this film's problems. Clint Eastwood's bland action direction is partly to blame, the star failing to generate any sense of excitement despite numerous situations in which certain death seems like the likely outcome for Shockley and Malley; the film's biggest drawback, however, is Sondra Locke, who couldn't act her way out of a paper bag if her life depended on it, and who doesn't even have the looks necessary to excuse such a lack of talent.

It's difficult to believe the stories that have arisen over the years involving numerous top Hollywood players vying for a chance to appear in or direct this action vehicle: the turgid, one-dimensional, inane screenplay by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack would seem to mitigate any interest from the likes of Streisand, Kristofferson, McQueen, MacGraw or Peckinpah. A boozing, faded police detective in Phoenix is assigned to pick up a prisoner in Las Vegas and escort them back to Arizona to testify in a trial; he has no idea what trial the police commissioner is talking about, nor he does he realize that the prisoner, "Gus", is a woman (much ado is made about the gender flip-flop, for no apparent purpose). Oddsmakers in Vegas are already betting the pair will never get across the state line alive, which causes the cop to ask this lady--a hooker, naturally--why everyone wants them dead (her story, something about the mob and the commissioner and a kinky sex act, is barely intelligible). The noisy action, sloppily-staged by director and star Clint Eastwood, consists mainly of thousands of rounds of gunfire decimating a house, a constable's car and a stolen bus (when the police shoot up the car, why doesn't anyone bother to look inside for victims or open the trunk?). Eastwood's relationship with college-educated prostitute Sondra Locke seems to bloom off-screen: she screams, he squints, but love is in the air! Locke has a lengthy phone-monologue where she talks to her mother which, I'm guessing, is supposed to substitute for character content. Eastwood stays in a guttural low-key, somewhere between his disc jockey from "Play Misty For Me" and his other cop, "Dirty" Harry Callahan. They look good together riding on a chopper in the desert, but it would be impossible for anyone to care about these characters or whether or not they make it to City Hall unscathed. *1/2 from ****

First off, I want to make one thing clear about the movie and the title. This is not any of the Dirty Harry films, however the character Eastwood plays, Ben Shockley does have uncanny similarities, although their ethics and view towards authority are different. Now before delving into The Gauntlet, y'all should suspend your beliefs because this movie have scenes that are just totally absurd and ridiculous, although they are very fun. For example, there are scenes where there is like a ten-minute shootout by like a thousand cops, so it was hard to believe that would happen. But I certainly enjoyed watching that scene.Clint Eastwood's film is about a rugged alcoholic cop who seems to be going nowhere in life. One day, the Phoenix police commissioner gives Shockley a seemingly innocent job and that involves the transport of a key witness from Las Vegas to Phoenix. Was he ever proved wrong! The ride back turns into a ride to hell as Ben must keep himself and his prisoner alive from corrupt cops, the mafia, and gang hoodlums.Clint Eastwood does a very good job here. In sense, he always does a good job scowling and kicking butt when needed. He had excellent chemistry with Sondra Locke, the prisoner named Gus Mally who also happens to be a prostitute. She was excellent and quite smart for the ordinary hooker. We also get some good supporting turns by Pat Hingle and William Prince who was Commissioner Blakelock.Overall, the Gauntlet is an absurd, over-the-top action movie and the film will never let you forget that. There are some scenes that will just have you laughing due to the absurdness of the scenes. But I'll be darned if I said they were not fun and enjoyable. It's a crazy, action-packed movie and a film that should be enjoyed as it is. It is just Clint Eastwood having a good time, in turn giving the audience a good time. I rate this film 8/10.