| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
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| Science-Fiction |
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| Horror |
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| Fantasy |
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TIGHTROPE
Rating: 
USA. 1984.
Director/Screenplay – Richard Tuggle, Producers – Clint Eastwood & Fritz Manes, Photography – Bruce Surtees, Music – Lennie Nichaus, Special Effects – Joe Unsinn, Production Design – Edward Carfagno. Production Company – Malpaso.
Cast:
Clint Eastwood (Detective Wes Block), Genevieve Bujold (Beryl Thibodeau), Alison Eastwood (Amanda Block), Jennifer Beck (Penny Block), Dan Hedaya (Detective Molinari)
Plot: Detective Wes Block investigates a serial killer who is targeting prostitutes involved in bondage and S&M. But as he investigates this world, Block becomes tempted by it and start to live out his own bondage fantasies with the prostitutes. But then the killer starts taunting Block by killing the prostitutes Block has been with.
Clint Eastwood is not what one might really call an actor. On screen he just is. He represents a singular image – he is mean and monosyllabic, he works on a set of rigid black-and-white morals, he will do whatever he has to to pursue his own vision of right and wrong, exact justice and protect women and children. It is a persona that never varies from film to film and one that made Eastwood, at one point, the most bankable star in the world. Sometimes the film can be worked around Eastwood’s persona to affect comedy or a different type of thriller, but Eastwood remains stolid and unvarying throughout. Nevertheless sometimes Eastwood himself fascinatingly digs beneath that persona, as in Play Misty for Me (1971) and High Plains Drifter (1973). And Tightrope, at least until Eastwood made Unforgiven (1992), is the darkest examination of that persona Eastwood has ever engaged in with a fascinating plot about a cop being tempted by the seedy underworld he has to delve into and the killer coming to taunt him about what he desires. For a star who banks on his singular persona, this was quite a daring vehicle for Eastwood at the time it was made.
But for all that the film disappoints. Just as much as it tries to re-examine Eastwood’s presence, it seems equally to be hamstrung by that presence which demands that the film be turned into a cop thriller. The bondage plot is just forgotten about halfway in as the action element takes over. Although this could just as equally be the plot’s paperback psychology – Eastwood it appears handcuffs people up because he doesn’t want them to get close to him; his becoming involved with Genevieve Bujold one supposes the film equates with his no longer wanting to handcuff women up. The film could have been something dark and psychologically driven like Cop (1987), but it misses by a mile. If anything it has the tendency to sound decidedly risible – at one point during lunch with Bujold, Eastwood comes out of the blue with one of the all-time great pickup lines: “I’m thinking about licking the sweat off your body.”
Copyright Richard Scheib 1992
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