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J.Edgar – Clint Eastwood: the ends justify the means

Tweet      J.Edgar – Clint Eastwood Little Boy, Fat Man, Operation Ranch Hand, CREEP, Operation Geronimo: respectively – Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Agent Orange in Vietnam, Watergate and the killing of Osama Bin Laden. We are all, as people, organisations or nations, tempted by the subversive moral argument that ends can sometimes justify means: but perhaps […]

Gran Torino – stereotypes, old, Asian, ethnic meet Dirty Harry

Tweet Gran Torino – Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry got to be old. And mean. I guess we expected that. Curmudgeonly, cranky, rollie-smoking, beer-drinking – a can and by-the-neck man, nary a glass in sight – ex-Korean War vet Walt Kowalski isn’t actually cop Harry Callaghan, just a kind of alter ego ‘with-no-name’ grown old, prejudices […]

Changeling – touted for the wrong Oscar

Tweet Changeling – Clint Eastwood Cinema, film is a collaborative art. If the director has the integrating artistic conception of the film, he still has to assemble his realisation of that ‘vision’ through the many critical disciplines, each an art in its own right, that provide the warp and weft of the finished film. It […]

Million Dollar Baby – journey of respect

Tweet Million Dollar Baby – Clint Eastwood Don’t be put off. This superb film is not light, trite or funny as it’s silly title suggests. Rope Burns, its working title, would have been fine. More importantly: boxing is its context, not its subject. Even if you hate boxing, you can still enjoy this movie. And […]

Flags of Our Fathers – resonant as a brick

Tweet The Flags of Our Fathers – Clint Eastwood (BBC Prize Review) This film has the resonance of a brick. There is more evocative imagery of the pathos and tragedy of war in the stills shown over the final credits than in the whole 132 minutes of film that precedes them. It is hard to […]