Clint Eastwood’s quirky, eccentric, and uncompromisingly personal tale of a down-and-out cop who takes on the Las Vegas mob and the Phoenix police force simultaneously is not for the literal-minded; it’s full of audaciously stylized action and sweeping quasi-Ophulsian camera movements. The subject is the redemption of the pop hero, and Eastwood accomplishes his purgation with wit, intelligence, and a complete disregard for the prevailing standards of realism (1977).
