Review of Joe Kidd (1972) by Michael T — 04 Feb 2012

I wanted to like this one more. It was directed by John Sturges and had a script by Elmore Leonard. Add in Clint Eastwood, fresh from DIRTY HARRY, a major movie star returning to the genre that made him famous.

All that talent, and JOE KIDD sort of, well, fizzles. Eastwood plays Joe Kidd, a horse rancher and local tracker who is first seen being hauled before a judge in some fin-de-siecle frontier town in the early 20th Century.

Then a group of Mexican-American radicals break into the courthouse and handcuff the sheriff and try to kidnap the judge. Kidd stops them, and is now on the hit list of the outlaw leader, John Saxon (with his blonde hair died black and a moustache and accent).

Kidd reluctantly agrees to track Saxon's band of outcasts for rail baron Robert Duvall but soon comes to regret his involvement with the vicious Duvall, who is the real villian of the piece. Saxon and his people were illegally thrown off their land by Duvall (scenary chewing alert), and are simply trying to redress the wrong that was done to them.

Eastwood seems to quickly lose interest in his character and this movie. Sturges also seems disinterested and the film is unevenly directed and filled with continuity gaps. I also wonder if Eastwood, Sturges, and Leonard watched the classic Sergio Corbucci Spaghetti Western, THE GREAT SILENCE? That film seemed to have influenced this one, right down to the "Broomhandle Mauser" semiautomatic pistol wielded by Don Stroud's hired goon.