Coogan's Bluff represents a milestone in Clint Eastwood's career.
When it was made in 1968, Eastwood was mainly known as a 'Western' actor, known to most American audiences as having played Rowdy Yates on the western TV series Rawhide between 1959 and 1965.
Between seasons he had ventured over to Spain to make three Italian 'Spaghetti Westerns' for Director Sergio Leone...you may have heard of them!!!!
When the 'Dollars' trilogy was released in the US, it catapulted Clint Eastwood to international superstardom, playing a new kind of character, the ambiguous good guy, the anti hero, as tough, as ruthless, as cold blooded as as merciless as the bad guys he goes up against.
Universal studios were quick to capitalise on his popularity and cast him in an American made Spaghetti western called Hang 'Em High which made big money and further cemented Eastwood's status as the tough cowboy.
However with his next movie Clint Eastwood and his newly formed 'Malpaso' production company wanted to try something different.
Teaming up with Director Don Siegel, Coogan's Bluff took Eastwood's 'Man with No Name' character and transported him to the modern day. (Well...as modern as 1968 was in those days)
As the film opens we see an escaped, fugitive Native American Indian on the western plains...we are automatically suckered in into believing it's another western, Eastwood doing his thing in his usual familiar setting.
However when Eastwood as the pursuing lawman rides into view, he does so not on a horse but in a dusty Jeep and we get excited because we know this is going to be interesting..a cowboy in the modern day.
It was a genius stroke...a smart move, try something different but have enough of the tried and tested in there not to make it too much of a dramatic shift.
Set and made in New York in the psychedelic hippie era of the late 1960's, it tells a fish out of water story of Arizona Sheriff 'Coogan' sent to the big Apple to extradite a fugitive who through his no nonsense attempts to cut through the bureaucratic red tape bogging down the modern world of policing, allows the fugitive to escape.
Coogan then has to employ all his western skills learned on the prairie to track his prey through the concrete jungle of New York.
It may not seem so to modern audiences but for 1968, the violence displayed in this film was considered pretty brutal and cutting edge, and the character played by Eastwood paved the way for the tough, no nonsense, cop on the edge movies of the 1970's including 1971's Dirty Harry and it's sequels not to mention countless imitators.
Eastwood would return to the western genre only sporadically over the next 25years, but it was this movie, that marked his transition from cowboy to cop that was to define his career for the next three decades.
Excellent support is given by Lee J. Cobb as the New York police captain, Susan Clark as Eastwood's love interest and Don Stroud and Tisha Sterling as the drugged out hippies he is chasing.
When it was made in 1968, Eastwood was mainly known as a 'Western' actor, known to most American audiences as having played Rowdy Yates on the western TV series Rawhide between 1959 and 1965.
Between seasons he had ventured over to Spain to make three Italian 'Spaghetti Westerns' for Director Sergio Leone...you may have heard of them!!!!
When the 'Dollars' trilogy was released in the US, it catapulted Clint Eastwood to international superstardom, playing a new kind of character, the ambiguous good guy, the anti hero, as tough, as ruthless, as cold blooded as as merciless as the bad guys he goes up against.
Universal studios were quick to capitalise on his popularity and cast him in an American made Spaghetti western called Hang 'Em High which made big money and further cemented Eastwood's status as the tough cowboy.
However with his next movie Clint Eastwood and his newly formed 'Malpaso' production company wanted to try something different.
Teaming up with Director Don Siegel, Coogan's Bluff took Eastwood's 'Man with No Name' character and transported him to the modern day. (Well...as modern as 1968 was in those days)
As the film opens we see an escaped, fugitive Native American Indian on the western plains...we are automatically suckered in into believing it's another western, Eastwood doing his thing in his usual familiar setting.
However when Eastwood as the pursuing lawman rides into view, he does so not on a horse but in a dusty Jeep and we get excited because we know this is going to be interesting..a cowboy in the modern day.
It was a genius stroke...a smart move, try something different but have enough of the tried and tested in there not to make it too much of a dramatic shift.
Set and made in New York in the psychedelic hippie era of the late 1960's, it tells a fish out of water story of Arizona Sheriff 'Coogan' sent to the big Apple to extradite a fugitive who through his no nonsense attempts to cut through the bureaucratic red tape bogging down the modern world of policing, allows the fugitive to escape.
Coogan then has to employ all his western skills learned on the prairie to track his prey through the concrete jungle of New York.
It may not seem so to modern audiences but for 1968, the violence displayed in this film was considered pretty brutal and cutting edge, and the character played by Eastwood paved the way for the tough, no nonsense, cop on the edge movies of the 1970's including 1971's Dirty Harry and it's sequels not to mention countless imitators.
Eastwood would return to the western genre only sporadically over the next 25years, but it was this movie, that marked his transition from cowboy to cop that was to define his career for the next three decades.
Excellent support is given by Lee J. Cobb as the New York police captain, Susan Clark as Eastwood's love interest and Don Stroud and Tisha Sterling as the drugged out hippies he is chasing.