Coogan's Bluff

Product Description

Clint Eastwood is Arizona deputy Walt Coogan, sent to New York city to escort a prisoner home. But the prisoner is not ready to be transferred back to Arizona and so Coogan cuts a few corners. However, this helps the prisoner escape and, after Coogan clashes with the Sherrif McElroy (Lee J. Cobb), he is ordered back to Arizona. But Coogan does not want to give up his pursuit of the prisoner and takes the matter into his own hands.

Synopsis

This fish-out-of-water film was the beginning of a long association between Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood, who stars as the eponymous deputy sheriff from Arizona. The cowboy-cop is sent to New York City to extradite escaped murderer James Ringerman (Don Stroud), only to be told by lieutenant McElroy (Lee J. Cobb) that the killer is recovering from an trip at Bellevue Hospital and can be released only with his doctors' approval. After some low-key flirtation with probation officer Julie Roth (Susan Clark), Coogan decides to take the bull by the horns and tricks Ringerman's Bellevue attendants into releasing him. However, on the way to the airport, the Arizona-bound cop is waylaid by Ringerman's amusingly wacked-out girlfriend, Linny (Tisha Sterling), and beaten senseless by a goon, allowing his prisoner to escape. Later, while in Julie's apartment, he surreptitiously extracts Linny's file to get her address and tracks her to an Electric Circus-like club whose habitues he regards with utter disdain. An amusing action film, Coogan's Bluff makes much of the irony of the laconic Old West, with Eastwood being equally put off by both the bureaucratically hamstrung cops and the -fueled hippies.