Tightrope **** (1984, Clint Eastwood, Geneviève Bujold, Dan Hedaya) – Classic Movie Review 3815

Writer-director Richard Tuggle’s 1984 thriller is admittedly nasty and violent, but it also exciting, tense and suspenseful – and an underestimated, perhaps often misunderstood movie. It is rated R for strong sexuality, nudity, terror, violence and language.

Clint Eastwood stars as police detective Wes Block, a tormented cop on the trail of a sex murderer of hookers in New Orleans and Geneviève Bujold plays Beryl Thibodeaux, the director of a rape crisis centre. Eastwood’s character finds sexual demons inside him that link him with the bad guy. It then gets personal when the killer chooses victims known to Block – including his daughters.

Eastwood walks the tightrope of taste and sexuality, and invites you to judge whether he falls off in a deliberately disturbing, challenging movie that may go over the edge into the objectionable for some audiences.

With several well-staged set pieces that are terrifying, it operates effectively on the level of a mainstream crime thriller, apart from the provocative story’s journey into the dark psychology of its characters.

Also in the cast are Dan Hedaya as Detective Molinari, Alison Eastwood as Amanda Block, Jennifer Beck as Penny Block and Marco St John as Leander Rolfe.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3815

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