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Rating: Almost intriguing part, in the neon-lit scenario of the casinos. A sort of disinhibited femme fatale (Bernadette Peters), with a beauty that is not artificial, imperfect. A young and fit Clint, magnetic, but soon leading back to the canonical image of the macho, a bit crazy but good, predictable and reassuring.
A minor episode, I would say minimal in the vast career of our protagonist. A sort of vigilante in civilian clothes, a cowboy who replaces the horse with the pink Cadillac. In short, Hollywood epic in its declining phase, when the emphasis and trust in these virile figures seem to have reached an absolute minimum. The postmodern version of the thriller-comedy and gangster movie of the '90s, with Tarantino and the Coens, perhaps also arises as a reaction to these already tired and dull episodes (who knows how many others came out), where there is still belief in a society with clear distinctions between good and evil.
Such a film indeed appears as an unwitting parody of these preconceived schemes, the gang of neo-Nazis as the soulless villains could be a precursor to what are the nihilists of The Big Lebowski. "They don't believe in anything." Such films are useful to understand how radical the work of renewal by certain later directors has been, particularly in overcoming the now stale setting with a hero (however slightly deviant) and a horde of almost comical baddies (but unintentionally) threatening the princess of the moment. Usual schemes, providentially dismantled later.
More. This episode also marks the end of Clint Eastwood as a classic action-thriller character. His figure indeed somehow anticipates the stories, his face decrees the outcome of a story in advance. In fact, putting him in a film with a standard role equates to dampening any possible narrative evolution, because Clint comes before the plots, he stands above them. Could he ever die or lose in such an unimportant story? The outcomes are already determined. It is no coincidence that this is the last time for him in the role of the action protagonist.
It reminds me a bit of the speeches in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. When the producer (Al Pacino) explains to Rick Dalton that, every time, it's not the character who dies, but the actor. Here, the opposite is true. Eastwood never loses, never dies. And thus, he is no longer interesting in these roles.
Doing a little fast forward, I like to briefly compare it with A Perfect World. Only four years have passed, but the former gunslinger now seems very far from donning the guise of the action man. He is an old cynic, commenting from afar on the protagonists' escape (it's still a road movie), and in some way, he flaunts disinterest in human affairs. He seems to want to spoil them. As if the hero has lived so long that he becomes the villain.
The failure of a work like this could have been useful in indicating to the actor and director the need for a change, a radical mutation that will evolve, taking on more complex nuances, into a sort of deeply human and empathetic cynicism, in works like Gran Torino etc.
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