Resolution 9 - Clint Eastwood Quest - 60% Complete

We are now past the halfway mark of the Clint Eastwood film review quest resolution. 1990's The Rookie is where I start off the second half of the ten film BluRay collection of Eastwood's finest. This is very familiar territory compared to the last two Eastwood flicks I covered, Absolute Power and Dirty Harry. By similar I mean a cop drama chock filled with one liners up the wazoo.

Instead of being the sympathetic cat burglar like Clint was in Absolute Power, he is now on the side of the law as veteran detective Nick Pulovski, and at the beginning of the film he loses his partner when an attempt to bust a car heist goes horribly wrong. Pulovski is teamed with new partner David Ackerman (Charlie Sheen), a detective coming up the ranks who has rampant parent issues that the film throws in your face constantly throughout.

Ackerman and Pulovski play the odd couple as they attempt to take down a gang headed up by Strom, who is masterfully portrayed by one of my favorite Hollywood antagonists, Raul Julia. I remember around this time I was a big Charlie Sheen fan, and loved him in other late 80s/early 90s films like the first two Major League movies, The Chase and Terminal Velocity, but he felt completely miscast in his role here. Right from the get go of The Rookie they make it seem like this is his very first day in any type of role for the law, but Sheen seems about 10 years older for that type of portrayal here and I just do not buy him as the incompetent rookie like the film wants me to. I have seen other films cast this role far more effectively like with Joseph Gordon Levitt's character Blake in Dark Knight Rises.

At least Eastwood and Julia nail their performances. Eastwood is a slightly toned down version of his antihero character from Dirty Harry and plays a little more by the rules. He is still full of one liners, and actually I think they went way overboard with the one liners from all characters here as it seemed they were trying a new one every few minutes. One that did stand out though that cracked me up was when Ackerman's dad was trying to give Pulovski a big sum of cash to guarantee his son's safety and Pulovski responded with, "If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster." Julia is awesome because he goes balls to the wall over the top as the antagonist. You cannot help but hate him in here as the slimy gangster. I have not seen too many Julia films, but I do love his performances as the over the top villain in here and in another early 90s cheesy action classic, Street Fighter.

This is probably the weakest of the bunch of films I have seen so far in the Eastwood collection. It is still all right, but Sheen's performance in here really hurts it. There are a couple of bright spots from him here though, with him going crazy and kicking ass and tearing apart a bar in one of the most interesting bar fight scenes I have seen since Dirty Work. The pacing also seems a little off, the chase to get to Strom and some of the other supporting actors along the way drag the film down a little. There is the standard final chase/action sequence with Pulovski and Ackerman going after Strom and his heavy, and while it gets the job done, it did not have me on the edge of my seat like the final sequences in Dirty Harry and Absolute Power.

Unfortunately it looks like The Rookie is the first movie I am not recommending as must see viewing out of the Eastwood collection. For crime dramas there are far better ones out there, especially the aforementioned Clint Eastwood films. If you want to follow along on the Clint Eastwood collection fun with me, here is a link to the box set I have off Amazon.

Past Eastwood Collection Blogs

Absolute Power
Dirty Harry
Kelly's Heroes
Where Eagles Dare
Gran Torino