Joe Kidd

UK Release Date. 22 September 1972
Certification. AA

Running Time. 1 hour 28 mins
Director. John Sturges
Cast. Robert Duvall, Clint Eastwood, Stella Garcia, John Saxon.
Rating. 48%

Review.

In the 1950s and 1960s, John Sturges directed some of the greatest adventures on screen - Bad Day At Black Rock (1955), Gunfight At The O.K. Corral (1957), Last Train From Gun Hill (1959), The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963). The director was famed for a commanding cinematic style and a well-deserved reputation for elevating the character-based drama elements of machismo genres - westerns, crime and war films.

At the same time, American writer Elmore Leonard saw several of his early works published - Three-Ten To Yuma, The Captives, Last Stand At Saber River and Hombre. Leonard later specialised in crime fiction and remains one of my favourite authors for the likes of The Switch, Rum Punch, Killshot, Get Shorty and Out Of Sight. Many of these titles have been adapted for film. Indeed, the author himself once said, "I have always seen my books as movies."

Therefore, imagine a western directed by John Sturges, written by Elmore Leonard and starring Clint Eastwood, fresh from the box office success of Dirty Harry. The film should have been a classic. But Joe Kidd is no classic.

The eponymous Joe Kidd (Clint Eastwood) is a former bounty hunter hired by a wealthy landowner, Frank Harlan (Robert Duvall) to track down Mexican revolutionary Luis Chama (John Saxon). The moral ambiguity of the lead character pigeonholes Joe Kidd as a revisionist western - a sub-genre Eastwood himself would explore as a director in High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Rider and most memorably in the Academy Award-winning Unforgiven.

But Joe Kidd suffers from an anaemic storyline and lack of a cohesive narrative. The film is devoid of tension or suspense. What little action there is, is stop-start. And to cap it all off, the climax of the film sees Eastwood drive a steam train through the local saloon. In a film with scant character development, only Robert Duvall impresses with his assured portrayal of the uncompromising Frank Harlan. 

Considering the array of talent involved in the project, the staggeringly derivative and generic nature of the film leaves you ultimately disappointed. Joe Kidd is one of Clint Eastwood's dullest westerns.