Most Hollywood actors are lucky if there’s one truly iconic character on their screen credit list, let alone two. We might talk about Harrison Ford (Han Solo and Indiana Jones), Sylvester Stallone (Rocky and Rambo), or Keanu Reeves (Neo and John Wick), but perhaps at the top of the heap is Clint Eastwood, the unnamed “dirty” Harry Callahan. Not only did he give such an unforgettable impression in both roles, but those characters are also roughly synonymous with their respective genres. Can you really imagine a Westerner without thinking about Clint wearing his poncho and biting the shelter from Sergio Leone’s “Dolph Trilogy” (or a police thriller without drawing him squinting his eyes along the barrel of cannon in “Dirty Harry”)? Certainly, when Eastwood’s two most famous characters merge, it can even identify moments in the film. The film is an underrated Western called “Coogan’s Bluff.”
Director Don Siegel’s Neo Western is the first of five films made by a veteran filmmaker with Eastwood. Siegel was probably best known for leading the 1956 “The Body Snatcher Invasion” before his collaboration with Hollywood’s latest tough guy. They were both nonsense, straightforward and unpretentious, as Siegel and Eastwood tried to build on the international fame the latter gained in starring in Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns, which made them a great pairing.
The pale imitation of Ted Post’s “dollar” films first appeared in theaters, but “Coogan’s Bluff” is far more confident in its identity, blending Western elements with a police thriller tied to a modern city. Initially thought of as a television series that was working on Eastwood’s pre-megafame western show “Rawhide,” a great way for the star’s special brand of Laconic Budserie. Released when more elegant Westerners like “The Wild Bunch” and “Once on the Time in the West” were giving a sad send-off to the classic form of the genre, “Coogan’s Bluff” feels like a b-send for revisionism. Wild West may already be declining to modernity at that time, but Siegel and Eastwood were ready to bring traditional Western values to the heart of Manhattan in the late ’60s and crush their heads in the old fashioned way.
So what happens to Coogan’s bluff?
Clint Eastwood appears in “Coogan’s Bluff” as Walt Coogan, the two-fist deputy sheriff from Fictional Puet County, Arizona. He might drive a jeep instead of riding a horse, but he is in many ways a throwback to the old frontier. Without flapping his wings, Ultramacho is not worried about defeating the suspect before he can defeat him. He is also a bit Rotario and he celebrates his latest arrest in a bit of a corner while his prisoners are tied up outside. His rough house approach has exploited his boss, but he still sends him to New York to get James Linman (Don Stroud).
With him on the ground in Manhattan, Coogan couldn’t look more out of place on the grey streets of an urban jungle. It’s not important to Walt. Like Paul Hogan’s “Crocodile Dundee,” nearly 20 years later, his nonsense backcountry methods make him more than what the city has to throw at him. Walking around the cowboy boots, string ties and the giant Stetson, he checks in to the Fleabag Hotel and soon clashes with Li inside the NYPD McElroy.
Coogan’s mission is complicated when McElroy reveals that Linman is currently in hospital after an overdose of LSD and will not be released without Supreme Court approval. Red tape and extra paperwork aren’t the way to do things in Arizona, and Coogans aren’t in the mood to stick. Instead, he tricks the hospital order into handing over Linman to him (“Bluff” in the title), but the gambling is terribly surprised when a prisoner friend ambushs Roman and helps the murderer escape. Now we are entering territory familiar to “Dirty Harry” fans. Despite warnings that McKelloy does not have jurisdiction in New York, Coogan goes wild over the city’s hippie community, tracking down the target and taking him home by any necessary means.
The nameless Eastwood man transitions to Dirty Harry
“Coogan’s Bluff” is a time capsule, set at a time when the power of flowers and counterculture movements were still strong as the 1960s were approaching the end of the year. In that sense, Eastwood’s Coogans are very male representatives. Linman may be a violent criminal worthy of justice, but the sloppyness of the Bohemian underground culture that forbids smoking by Cowboy Roman is a square eye view of the scene. In short, Coogan is happy to hit everyone’s topics, beat the unwashed hippie type, sleep with Linman’s girlfriend and get information about where he is. Not cool, man!
It’s fascinating to see how Eastwood’s persona’s loneliness in the “Dollar Trilogy” blends with what’s approaching the level of Dirty Harry’s awkwardness over the course of the film. The transition from a roaming gunslinger to an unbanned Roman for holds had already begun in the actor’s previous film, “Hang ‘Em High.” This time, the sheriff’s badge in Coogan’s shirt places him on the side of the law, but his approach to supporting it isn’t too far from the unnamed man. By the end of the film (when things get really violent), it becomes something of a gritty retaliation regularly with Harry Callahan and his very large guns.
“Coogan’s Bluff” is a relatively light-hearted film, but it paves the way for “Dirty Harry” three years later, with other similarities beyond Eastwood’s existence. Don Stroud’s rather unfortunate hippie criminal predicts Scorpio in the latter film (Andy Robinson’s long-haired sniper has signs of peace in his belt). In that respect, both films appear to portray the counterculture movement as a deviant and threatening to traditional American values. Interestingly, the final scene in “Coogan’s Bluff” is even reflected in the opening moment of “Dirty Harry.” It appears that during “The Beguiled” (the second collaboration), Siegel and Eastwood couldn’t wait to continue where they left off. The results set the template for the next 20 years of Hollywood cup thriller.
