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English (SDH), French, German, Italian, Spanish Portuguese, Japanese, none

Extras:

This features as nasty a piece of wacko-scum-on-the-loose as Clint has ever faced. Unlike the last three Dirty Harry thrillers, however, in which Eastwood's pillar of the law has been unequivocal, his new creation, New Orleans detective Wes Block, is more steeped in the mire than any major US star has ever dared play. His quarry is only one step ahead of Wes himself in frequenting the jacuzzis, massage parlours, and S/M dives of the red light district; and while the cop/killer doppelgänger game is nothing new, Wes' taste for using the handcuffs in bed as well as out would have choked Philip Marlowe. A film about desire and its control is hardly what one might expect, but then Eastwood has always been Hollywood's most experimental star. And he's still one of the best.

Clint Eastwood turns kinky in ''Tightrope,'' playing a police inspector investigating a string of sex crimes and succumbing to the wiles of some of the prostitutes he questions. But it's only a temporary aberration. For the most part, ''Tightrope'' is a crisp thriller that is essentially faithful to the ''Dirty Harry'' formula, notwithstanding its attempts to give Mr. Eastwood's character what the production notes call ''an added dimension of complexity.'' Kinks or no kinks, Mr. Eastwood does his usual turn as the most hard-boiled, relentless detective in town.

The town this time is New Orleans, and the plot seems to take Mr. Eastwood's Wes Block into every massage parlor in the French Quarter. But Wes is a homebody, too, raising two young daughters and pining for the wife who left him. (The older of the girls is played nicely by Alison Eastwood, the star's lanky blond 12-year- old daughter.)

The movie begins at a time when Wes's domestic evenings are being routinely interrupted by phone calls, each announcing that another prostitute has been murdered. The investigation brings Wes into contact with an earnest feminist named Beryl (played with energy and intelligency by Genevieve Bujold) from the city's rape-prevention center, who is eager to help catch the rapist and who is very emphatically not Wes's type.

Gary Tooze

May 28th, 2014