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Eastwood was the Man With No Name and Dirty Harry first; everything else came second.
Nobody turning out films at Eastwoods pace can be great all the time.
Sometimes the approach produces classics, sometimes it doesnt.
But its impossible to trace a pattern of decline.
Eastwood remains capable of producing a stunner after a string of underwhelming efforts.
(By all reports, Eastwood assumed the reins of the 1984 thrillerTightrope, for instance.
Universal didnt know what to do with the film and effectively buried it.
Its intriguing as a time capsule of early-70s Los Angeles, but not much else.
Nothing here suggests that Eastwood had been holding out on moviegoers by never making a musical until now.
It doesnt really work, but you wont see another movie like it.
Apart fromFirefox, hed wisely leave stories of spy craft to others in the years to come.
Both are perfectly acceptable, but neither is ever extraordinary.
The film became a huge hit, but its among the least probing of Eastwoods war movies.
An unrestrained performance from Kevin Spacey doesnt help matters, though the films more misfire than disaster.
Along the way, he falls in love and starts to realize hes part of a setup.
If nobody seems that deeply invested in the film personally, everyone gives the impression of enjoying themselves anyway.
That doesnt mean this one should be overlooked, however.
Months later, the Los Angeles Police Department unites mother and child only theres something wrong.
Its a sweet film, but one with a sneaky amount of depth to it.
15.Honkytonk Man(1982)
Eastwood has had a long, far-from-casual relationship with music.
Its not hard to picture an alternate universe in which he pursued that passion instead.
WithHonkytonk Man, Eastwood cast himself as a doomed, fictional, Depression-era singer Red Stovall.
He became a musician instead.
But he struggled with addiction throughout his career, and those addictions cut his life short.
That sort of justification is tough to swallow, whether in real life or on film.
Its also not really the point ofGran Torino, in which Walts actions matter more than his words.
9.Juror No.
2(2024)
Juror #2arrived amid rumors it will be Eastwoods final film.
Dont be surprised if its not.
In this case, its a legal thriller with a strange twist.
(It sounds more implausible in description than in the film.)
Toni Collette co-stars as Faith, a prosecutor with an election on the line who needs a big win.
Eastwood tweaks his persona and takes Old West cliches to their absurd extreme, but he doesnt mock either.
Its a remarkable story but also a fairly short one.
In full Everyman mode, Tom Hanks plays Sully as a man whose heroism and professionalism are inextricable.
But first, its worth mentioning the films troubled origins.
For all that,The Outlaw Josey Walesis anything but the fruit of a poisoned tree.
Maybe the book was just waiting to be adapted into a great movie, as some books are.
(Ever readThe Godfather?
Its not such a hot piece of writing either.)
There they discover evidence of a long-ago affair between their mother and aNational Geographicphotographer named Robert Kincaid.
Cut to a flashback set in the mid-60s where a moving, slow-burning romance unfolds.
Eastwood insists on finding humanity everywhere, even in the most dehumanizing circumstances.
Respect at last, but did it matter?
