There have been few careers in film history like Clint Eastwood‘s. Strike that: there have been no careers like Clint Eastwood’s. After breaking through in the Western TV series “Rawhide,” the actor stepped into movies with Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western “Dollars trilogy” (1964’s “A Fistful Of Dollars,” 1965’s “For A Few Dollars More” and 1966’s “The Good, The Bad And The Ugly“) and soon became one of Hollywood’s biggest box office draws. He’s had a major smash in every decade since the 1960s, and in most decades way more than one. At the age of 84, he delivered his biggest hit ever with “American Sniper.”
He’s produced almost all his movies, he was mayor of a North California town for three years in the 1980s, and he pretended that an empty chair was the sitting president of the United States of America to a baffled television audience at the 2012 Republican National Conference. And somehow, even in light of a half-century career as one of the biggest movie stars, and certainly the most enduring, Eastwood’s carved out another career as an Oscar-winning director of 35 films to date, more than most full-time filmmakers ever finish.
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To some, including some collaborators, he’s a fuss-free director who cranks out movies at a prodigious pace and suffers from the resulting speed, with some of his films feeling rushed or half-baked. To others, he’s an old-fashioned classicist master deserving mention alongside his collaborators, mentors or heroes like Leone, Don Siegel, John Ford or John Huston.
But on whichever side of the debate you fall, there’s no denying that Eastwood is as major an American filmmaker as there has been, and has more than a few masterpieces under his belt. And so with his 35th film as director, the Tom Hanks-starring “Sully,” hitting theaters next week, we’ve decided to take a look back and dig into Eastwood’s career as director, ranking every one of the the films he’s helmed from worst to best. Take a look below, and let us know what you think in the comments.
34. “Hereafter” (2010)
Eastwood’s strengths —his economical approach, his clean shooting/editing style— somehow become his weaknesses in this painfully listless supernatural thriller about near-death experiences. Writer Peter Morgan claimed he was surprised that Eastwood was going into production with what he considered a rough first-draft script, and it shows: while it’s an interesting premise, the story hadn’t quite gelled into a driving narrative on the page and the film is similarly purposeless, giving the strange impression that you’re watching a movies that is actually uninterested in its own content. A puffy, humorless Matt Damon sleepwalks through his performance as a reluctant clairvoyant, enjoying a romance with Bryce Dallas Howard that is so half-hearted you wonder why it’s even there, and the general lukewarm tone and lack of forward momentum means the movie is as likely to lull you to sleep as provoke wonder or joy or sadness… or anything really. Supposedly an introspective meditation on life and death, it feels fundamentally at odds with Eastwood’s spare style, so even though the gloss of solid craftsmanship means you can’t really call it badly made, it is so deathly dull that you can easily deem it Eastwood’s biggest ever misfire.
33. “The Eiger Sanction” (1975)
It’s hard to imagine Eastwood in the iconic role of James Bond (which he reportedly turned down), but “The Eiger Sanction” offers maybe the best idea as such, and frankly makes us glad that bit of casting never came to pass. As mild-mannered art professor Dr. Jonathan Hemlock, who’s actually a retired CIA assassin called out of retirement for the proverbial one last job, Eastwood is woefully miscast, but his performance is genius compared to the film around him. Thayer David is reasonably good value as Hemlock’s albino ex-Nazi boss, but even that character description gives a good sense of how nonsensical this film is. Furthermore, there’s a nasty vein of unreconstructed homophobia running through the film that, linked with its sadistically violent streak, makes it a deeply unpleasant watch to a modern eye. The mountaineering sequences are well staged,, but even those were obtained at a high cost: there were a number of accidents during filming, including the death of a body double. Cameraman Frank Stanley, who was badly injured in another fall, blamed Eastwood’s slapdash approach, calling him “a very impatient man who doesn’t really plan his pictures or do any homework.” Certainly, “The Eiger Sanction” feels among the very least considered of Eastwood’s movies.
32. “Firefox” (1982)
“I’m going in, let’s see what this baby can do,” Eastwood growls in typical fashion in “Firefox,” his Cold War-era movie about a pilot who is sent into the Soviet Union on a mission to steal a prototype rival jet fighter that could spell disaster for the good ol’ U.S. of A. Maybe we could call “Firefox” the proto-“Iron Man,” since every time Eastwood gets in his spy jet, the camera is excitedly locked in on his face while he explains absolutely everything he’s doing and thinking. It feels like 80% of the movie is Eastwood’s be-helmeted face describing whatever it is he’s flying towards (please, turn the camera the OTHER WAY!). Which is pretty hilarious when you consider that apparently $20 million of its $21 million dollar budget was spent on special effects. Featuring expository bon mots like, “Target is not taking avoiding action, Captain!” followed by “I can’t take evasive action, I’m too low on fuel” to explain the most rudimentary elements of the plot action, “Firefox”might have been great when you were an eleven-year-old boy in the ‘80s and wanted to watch an “action” flick. As a grown up with new-millennium standards, not so much.
31. “Breezy” (1973)
Of all the eras and ethos to have dated badly when it comes to their cinematic incarnations, perhaps none fare quite so poorly as the hippie age, which seems so alien in its free-love, far-out willful naiveté as to be borderline incomprehensible. Eastwood was originally mooted to play the William Holden role of the older square guy awoken to a new love of life by a teenaged orphan hitchhiker in a floppy hat (ick!), but felt he was too young at the time. It’s well nigh impossible to watch this intergenerational romance now without getting skeeved out by how Holden’s Frank turns on a dime from gruffly protective father figure to sexual partner embarrassed by his attraction to a girl less than half his age (which seems determined by conservative math, as she has just left high school and Frank is at least in his 50s). And while Kay Lenz is quite delightful in the title role, she has ludicrous dialogue to contend with, and the short shrift of a story that becomes borderline vampiric in how her extreme youth, openness and idealism are seen as most important for their function in making an old guy feel better about his otherwise ultra-complacent lifestyle.
30. “The Rookie” (1990)
The cop movie had changed over the 1980s: lone wolves like Dirty Harry were out, and mismatched duos as seen in films like “Lethal Weapon” and “48 Hrs” were in. With returns on the “Dirty Harry” series dipping (1988’s “The Dead Pool” made half of what “Sudden Impact” had), Eastwood tried to move with the times, helming this quickie actioner that might be the most forgettable film he ever directed. When his partner (Hal Williams) is killed in the process of taking down car thief Strom (Raul Julia), veteran cop Nick Pulovski (Eastwood) is paired with a younger, privileged newcomer (Charlie Sheen), as the pair continue the investigation against the wishes of their superior. No cop-movie cliche goes unused here, and Eastwood’s essentially playing a watered down Harry, which just makes the character utterly dull, particularly given that he and Sheen share very little chemistry. The action’s competent enough, but there’s so little of interest here that we spent most of the movie puzzling why Eastwood would cast the great Julia and Sonia Braga as the movie’s villains, but have the Puerto Rican and Brazilian stars play… Germans?
29. “Invictus” (2009)
Morgan Freeman playing Nelson Mandela was inevitable. It’s just a shame that this perfect casting was wasted on such a staggeringly lackluster film. The film is part underdog-sports-fable, part political history, yet out of all the fascinating stories that comprise South Africa’s recent past, “Invictus” tells the ‘true life’ tale of Mandela inspiring and encouraging the (predominately white) South African rugby team to an unlikely World Cup victory. It’s a bizarre choice of subject matter, but it’s elevated by the performances —not even so much Freeman as Matt Damon, who brings subtlety and depth to a character who is pretty reactionary by Hollywood hero standards, while he’s also convincing physically as a South African rugby captain (even his accent is flawless). As ever, Eastwood is restrained and even-handed to a fault —seriously, it’s a fault here: the film could do with some good old-fashioned bias to shake it out of its stupor. Instead, it is stately, respectful and loaded with gravitas, but in aiming for ‘important’ status, it lands wide of the mark at ‘worthy’ instead. But perhaps even that could be forgiven if we weren’t so distracted by the specters of much more interesting untold stories that lurk around its edges.
28. “Play Misty For Me” (1971)
The premise for Eastwood’s feature directorial debut might seem absurdly comical today, but hey, it was the ‘70s! Not everything was Sidney Lumet back then. The film follows Eastwood playing a radio DJ who meets a woman who seems at first to be a playfully obsessed female fan. She constantly calls into his radio show requesting Errol Garner’s recording of “Misty,” and soon Eastwood is curious enough to meet her. They have a one night stand and Eastwood thinks that’s it for her, but as these sorts of stories go, she won’t let him get away that easy. The film has a breezy sort of charm and a few genuine thrills that make it an easy watch on a late night. But it’s also anonymously directed, completely forgettable and fairly dumb. In many respects, it’s entirely the kind of first film you’d expect from a guy who’s already got his eye on the long game: it’s unimpeachably professional but not particularly inspired on a story or a visual level, which also makes it an non-divisive Hollywood calling card. If anything, the film served as an announcement by Eastwood to his fans that “Hey, I like jazz music, okay?” In that sense, mission accomplished.