I've been watching a bunch of Clint Eastwood movies lately and it's easy to tell when a really top notch director was at work - Don Siegel's handling is so good, so better than, say Clint's - confident and taunt and imaginative.
It almost makes you forgive the unpleasant side to this film, which is as big a Red State fantasy pic as any Clint would make later in life. He's an Arkansas deputy sheriff sent to the Big Smoke to bring back a baddy. In the opening sequence he single handedly outwits and captures a crazed Indian killer, then beds a hot blonde and shows his superior what's what. In New York he rubs up against detective Lee J Cobb but also beats up a crim who is sexually harassing Suzanne Clarke... only to pretty much sexually harass her himself, only she really likes it and is in to it. The baddy is a crazed hippy type - from the Charles Manson mode before Manson became famous - very well played by Don Stroud (whose role is surprisingly small).
But to be fair there are several scenes where Coogan/Clint is outsmarted - the hippies knock him out, it takes him a while to figure out where the baddies are.
The script feels like one of those scripts that get fiddled with and "fixed" - where various bits and scenes are added instead of creating something more cohesive. It really is just a series of encounters for Coogan in New York City. But that is a very strong concept - and it's late 1960s New York too, which would probably shock people from today, with its hippies, and grimy crime, and alternate lifestyles.
There's some outstanding action sequences - the final chase, a fight in a pool room - that make you wish you had more.
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