Tightrope


By Julia Szabo

Warner Home Video, 1984, 114 minutes
 
Add this title to your Netflix queue
 
Clint Eastwood produced this crime thriller, starring as Wes Block, New Orleans police detective and single parent to two young daughters and three dogs. His assignment: track down the serial rapist-murderer who's been targeting young, attractive women into kinky sex. Except there's just one little complication: when he's not on duty, Wes frequents the same seedy haunts now terrorized by the killer. This variation on the Dirty Harry icon is dirty indeed, and the tightrope of the title is the precarious one that links his personal and professional lives.
 
Early in the film, Wes and his daughters (the elder, Amanda, is played by his real-life daughter Alison) encounter a stray mutt. The girls ask to keep him, and they get their way. The foundling becomes pet number four; the other three are a Dachshund, a Miniature Poodle, and a Saint Bernard. As an owner of multiple dogs myself, I laughed out loud in recognition to see the entire family, two- and four-legged, traveling by car, snouts sniffing out the windows - a welcome moment of levity in a story that fills the viewer with serious dread.
 
When Wes secures a date with rape counselor Beryl Thibodeaux (Genevieve Bujold), his younger daughter Penny asks, "Does she like dogs?" This is a thriller, so I'm not about to reveal the plot twists. Let's just say that, even though not one of the dogs is called by name, this movie offers admirable proof of a plain, brown, mixed-breed's extraordinary survival skills. 
 
In fact, Kathie Coblentz, editor of Clint Eastwood: Interviews, urged me to see this film years ago because one of its themes is, as she put it, "the superiority of mutts over purebreds." I'm glad I finally took her advice.
 
Special kudos to Clint, who happens to be seriously allergic to dogs, for letting the mutt sleep with him in bed, the better to portray Wes as a guy who, deep down, is A-OK, in part because he values dogs as bona fide family members.


Presence of dogs: reelreelreelreel
Respect for dogs: reelreelreelreel
Canine star quality: reelreelreelreel
Family friendly: reelreelreelreel


 

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