Sunday, April 10, 2011

Joe Kidd (1972)



          Possibly Clint Eastwood’s least interesting Western, this threadbare action flick has an impressive pedigree—celebrated novelist Elmore Leonard wrote the screenplay, and macho-cinema veteran John Sturges, of The Magnificent Seven fame, directed. Despite the participation of these boldfaced names plus that of Robert Duvall, who plays the heavy, Joe Kidd tells a forgettable story unimaginatively, so it’s only watchable because of production values, star power, Lalo Schifrin’s assertive score, and Bruce Surtees’s robust cinematography. Also working in the movie’s favor is brevity, since Joe Kidd runs just 88 minutes. After a lugubrious first act, the story gets going when rapacious developer Frank Harlan (Duvall) hires former bounty hunter Joe Kidd (Eastwood) to track Mexican revolutionary Luis Chama (John Saxon), whose rabble-rousing has interfered with Harlan’s schemes. Beyond some minor drama involving Joe’s shifting allegiances, there’s not much more to the plot, so lots of screen time gets consumed by macho posturing and lengthy sequences of characters stalking each other. A probing exploration of frontier morality this is not. One can find glimmers of Leonard’s signature pulpy style in Kidd’s bitchy dialogue, but while the best Leonard-derived Westerns have rock-solid conceits (see both versions of 3:10 to Yuma), the storyline of Joe Kidd is leisurely and unfocused, with characterizations—usually a Leonard strength—given depressingly short shrift.

          The movie looks good enough with Surtees behind the lens, though it seems he was asked to light sets more brightly than he usually does and he’s hampered by Sturges’s stodgy compositions. As for the actors, Eastwood conjures a few mildly amusing tough-guy moments, for instance when his character casually sips beer while watching a shootout. Duvall does what he can with a role so trite and underwritten it would stifle any actor, though his trope of mispronuncing the name of Saxon’s character conveys an appropriate level of arrogance. The wildly miscast Saxon snarls lines through a silly Spanish accent, and he also fails to demonstrate the charisma one might expect from a grassroots leader—one imagines that Leonard envisioned a more nuanced portrayal. Adding minor colors to the movie’s canvas are Paul Koslo, Don Stroud, and James Wainwright, who play nasty hired guns. Anyway, while some of the shootouts in Joe Kidd are moderately entertaining, the fact that such incidental details as the use of unusual firearms and an appearance by Dick Van Patten as a hotel clerk stick in the memory more than the main narrative underscore why the watchword here is unremarkable.


Joe Kidd: FUNKY


6 comments:

Jamal said...

As a lover of westerns, I knew there was a reason I was never drawn to Joe Kidd. No one ever mentions this one much when talking of Eastwoods westerns.

Jocko said...

Lame?! Ouch! Not too often I disagree with Professor Peter, but this is one movie that I'll argue at least deserves a Funky. I found it highly enjoyable. The plot was thin, but most westerns are. Eastwood actually shows a bit more of a charming, mischievous side to his character then you usually see. Plus, it had Don Stroud and Paul Koslo as Duval's henchman. Both gents always usually add something to whatever movie they are in.

There were many creative, clever kills sprinkled throughout that you don't see in most western action movies either then or now. The sniper duel was excellent. Makes a good double feature with Paul Newman's Hombre that was also based off an Elmore Leonard novel.

To each their own. I didn't particularly care for either version of 3:10 To Yuma. And in all honesty, and at the risk of destroying all of my credibility, I'm one of the few people on the planet that thought Eastwood's Unforgiven was overrated. I fully expect to be banned from this blog after admitting that.

By Peter Hanson said...

It's been a while, so this one's probably worth revisiting, especially since I wrote this review during the first year of the blog and had now idea how truly awful the worst '70s movies were. By comparison with some of the atrocities I've witnessed, "Joe Kidd" more likely falls near the bottom of the middle, rather than the top of the bottom, as it were...

Jocko said...

Yes, I can see how after 10 years that Joe Kidd would be more like a nice, spicey meatball, sitting atop of the mound of rancid spaghetti western trash that you've had to endure since then.

By Peter Hanson said...

FWIW, the ranking and review got an upgrade after I revisited the movie. It's still a bit of a yawn for me, but now that I've seen most American Westerns the '70s have to offer, it's accurate to say this one's nowhere near the bottom of the heap (even though it's also nowhere near the top).

Groggy Dundee said...

Supposedly this film was intended as a remake of the grim Sergio Corbucchi spaghetti Western The Great Silence, which Eastwood had seen and enjoyed. It's hard to see much influence though, except maybe the mountain setting and one character using a Broomhandle pistol.