Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6066 in DVD
• Released on: 1999-03-30
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, HiFi Sound, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 111 minutes

Amazon.com
Clint Eastwood is a down-and-out cop who is sent on a routine mission to pick up a witness and deliver her to the Phoenix courthouse. Sounds easy until he realizes he's been set up by the man who gave him this simple assignment. The interplay between Eastwood and the witness, a clever prostitute played by the actor's former girlfriend, Sondra Locke, is tough and playful. They obviously had strong chemistry. The story is highly implausible at times, but the action sequences are satisfying. Eastwood directs The Gauntlet very much in the style of his Academy Award-winning Western Unforgiven. Although the body count is surprisingly low for an Eastwood action film, a house, several cars, and a large bus get shot through with more holes than a big wheel of Swiss cheese. For Eastwood fans, this is the laconic hero at his prime. --Richard Natale

Customer Reviews

Wrecked by overkill
Okay, I am going against one of my own review tenets, and rating this movie very subjectively. This is a two-star feature, at best. I have watched the film a few times, because certain parts of it I enjoy. However, the considerable overkill (literally and figuratively!) almost wrecked the film for me, and I am a dyed-in-the-wool Clint Eastwood fan.

The sarcastic and graphic banter among Shockley, the errant and unfortunate Vegas cop, and "Miss Malley" was funny as heck, but the three most prominent "gunfight scenes" were just too far over the top for even me. Totally shredding the house in Vegas with gunfire was really ridiculous, but looked totally plausible when compared to the various impossibilities surrounding the assault on the bus in Phoenix. Ever see what an M-16/AR-15 round will do to an engine block? Now review a gauntlet of cops, on opposite sides of a porous bus, blazing away and turning the bus into a veritable sieve, without wiping out everyone who participated?

Nope, the story line was okay, the scenery was fine, the cast was excellent, and to a point it was enjoyable. It must be something about a quest for reality that got to me. :)

Fun movie....but....
Very poor transfer from VHS to DVD. Very grainy. Otherwise, the movie content itself is 'mindless entertainment' (fun).

Thrilling!
I was fortunate enough to have lived in Phoenix, AZ, when this movie was made there. I have always found The Gauntlet to be one of the most exciting and thrilling "rides through cop land" ever put on film. Clint Eastwood is excellent as the dupe and the action is non-stop.