Coogan's Bluff [DVD] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

This is one of Clints best unknown films with all the right Clint ingredients. One liners, motorbike chases, punch ups, beautiful women and some genuinely funny moments as Clint lays down some of the characteristics that he was to play in 'Dirty Harry', namely a high level of cynicism.
A brief outline of the story is that Coogan (Eastwood) is a Deputy Sherriff from Arizona sent to New York to pick up a prisoner wanted in his State. This leads to the fish out of water scenario of the cowboy with the hat and boots mingling with the hippies of New York. On finding his prisoner in hospital recovering from a drug overdose and therefore unfit for transfer and himself wanting to get back to Arizona as soon as possible, Coogan bluffs him out of the prison hospital then subsequently loses him. Coogan looks to his 'country ways' of tracking his escaped prisoner down in the big city while all the time dealing with his problematic superiors.

The script is wonderfully entertaining and perfect for Clint Eastwoods 'less talk' method of acting, particularly on the plane coming into New York when a bussiness man sitting next to Coogan looking at his cowboy hat cheerfully asks;
Texas?
-Arizona.
Rancher?
-Nope, Deputy Sherriff.
Oh one of your boys step out of line in our fair city?
-Nope, one of yours in ours.

This is the general theme of the film as Coogan is constantly asked Texas?
-Arizona.
countless times this happens and it never becomes boring only better each time.

The film was directed by Don Siegel who collaborated with Clint on some of his best films and his level of class shows on this film, particularly in a pool hall fight.
A motorbike chase has a genuinely high level of excitement as Clint and Don Stroud race around a park on Triumph motorbikes.
Watch for the moment when you can see Clint laughing when he should'nt be and then mistakenly rides straight into a wall!

On the down side the film is seriously dated with the Flower Power Hippies used as the opposite for Clints cowboy and there is one very bad piece of editing when Clint meets the desk sergent which will probably leave you laughing. But all this can be forgiven because it was an early film in Clints career, and therefore over thirty years old, so technically a bit patchy but more than making up in entertainment value.
The best role Clints played other then 'The Man With No Name' and 'Dirty Harry' in fact a combination of both with a touch of humour thrown in.

Clint Eastwood stars as Walt Coogan, an Arizona cop sent to New York City to extradite a guy named Ringerman - an escaped killer with a hippy chick girlfriend who's nothing but trouble.

Ringerman is recovering from a bad acid trip in a stat 'hospital', and it's here - while Coogan is collecting Ringerman, we meet his girlfriend, Linny, and it's one of the my favourite scenes in the film: 'You wanna know the thing about me? I got this little green worm in my head... and it glows in the dark!'

The pair give Coogan the slip on the way to the airport, and from their the film unfolds - chases, bar fights, a cop who doesn't play by the rules... everything you'd expect from a classic Clint film is there.

Coogan's Bluff isn't Clints finest film but it far from his worst, and somewhat of a forgotten gem. And due to his tough no-nonsense cowboy cop character, it straddles the ground between his Dirty Harry movies and 'Man With No Name' Spaghetti Westerns with a character somewhere inbetween rather nicely.

With an undercurrent of psychedelia and 'free love' running throughout, giving a cool, retro edge to it even today, Coogan's Bluff is another Eastwood flick from the period when Clint was king. It's still a great film and has stood the test of time and is a must see for film fans or Eastwood experts alike.

Coogan's Bluff is a 1968 film directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood, Lee J. Cobb and Don Stroud.

Eastwood plays the part of a young veteran deputy sheriff from a rural county in Arizona who travels to New York City to extradite an apprehended fugitive named Jimmy Ringerman, played by Stroud, who is wanted for murder.

Arizona deputy sheriff Walt Coogan, wearing boots and a cowboy hat, is sent to New York City to extradite escaped killer James Ringerman. He is up against the slow legal meanderings of New York when grumpy NYPD Detective Lieutenant McElroy informs him Ringerman is at Bellevue Hospital recovering from an overdose of LSD and cannot be moved until the doctors release him. Coogan is also told he needs to get extradition papers from the New York State Supreme Court.

Not satisfied Coogan decides to bluff his way into Bellevue Hospital and tricks the attendants into turning Ringerman over to him, and sets out to catch an early flight back to Arizona. Before he can get to the airport, Ringerman's hippie girlfriend Linny Raven and a tavern owner called Pushie ambush Coogan, beat him unconscious and enable Ringerman to escape. Lt. McElroy is furious with Coogan for acting on his own and letting a prisoner escape.

Stubborn, Coogan refuses to return home empty handed, and sets-out into the big city to recapture his prisoner despite being warned by the Lieutenant that he has no authority here, and further interference could lead to even more trouble.

Clint Eastwood's first collaboration with Don Siegel. Situated between his Spaghetti Westerns for Sergio Leone and the "Dirty Harry" series, "Coogan's Bluff" is a significant transitional film in Eastwood's career and screen image.

The narrative, which could be described as an urban Western (a classic Western in disguise), unfolds as an extended hunt, but while Ringerman is Coogan's quarry, the central conflict is between Coogan and the New York police. In one scene Lt. McElroy tells Coogan, "You're out of your league. We got 28,000 cops in the city. You leave Ringerman to us." When Coogan refuses, claiming it's a matter of honour to recapture the criminal, McElroy responds with mockery: "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, that it, Wyatt" McElroy's sarcastic reference to the heroic ideal of the Old West highlights the basic conflict around which the action is structured.

The name of the film itself is a reference to a New York City natural landmark, Coogan's Bluff, a promontory in upper Manhattan overlooking the site of the former long-time home of the New York Giants baseball club, the Polo Grounds. The idea for Coogan's Bluff originated in early 1967 as a TV series. It is about a character called Sheriff Walt Coogan, a lonely deputy sheriff working in New York City.The television series McCloud starring Dennis Weaver was loosely based on this story.