if u walk in to be swayed, like i did, u will enjoy every bit of it. if u r going to be a critic then that angle can ruin anything.

Nonetheless the film is clearly simplistic and admittedly brutally violent. This combination has resulted in what is only slightly more than a merely bearly digestible ‘American’ classic.

You feminists really need to find something else to do…

I thought this was a great movie, great to watch, and freeman and clunk had some great lines.

funny, i can’t recall much about girlfight except that i found it preposterous. MDB is no less so, but girlfight is living in a fashionable liberal fantasy and that’s no less annoying.

and mika–i like your phrasing, that eastwood’s characters are ‘confronting women’s experience.’ i’m thinking of ‘in the line of fire’ as well–the sparring between him and rene russo, secret service agent. especially when he sees her in a painted-on evening gown and asks her, “where do you keep your gun?” i love that line.

Fair enough. I think it wouldn’t bother/anger me so much if critics hadn’t ejaculated praise all over it. This is bad, bad storytelling — clich

i haven’t seen it yet, so i’ve deliberately avoided reading sentences that seem to reveal much detail about it.

but i would like to agree that eastwood has, for many years, been very interested in exploring women’s inner experience—or at least spending a lot of screen time acknowledging it—beginning with _sudden impact_ and also in _unforgiven_, both of whose plots are driven by women’s responses to sexual violence and both of which take a strong sympathetic stand with the women. even in _sudden impact_ the film is very much about violent dirty testosteroney harry’s having to confront and acknowledge a woman’s inner experience.

i’m not saying his feminist analysis is extremely profound. but i’m saying it strikes me as honest and, in _unforgiven_ at least (which i’ve taught a few times) extremely powerful and carefully considered. i read _unforgiven_, btw, as in part eastwood’s return to, and reevaluation from the perspective of age and experience of, the two roles that made him famous—the gunslinger with no name from the sergio leone flix (who becomes william munny) and don siegel’s rogue cop dirty harry (who becomes violent sheriff little bill daggett).

yeah, i don’t disagree with any of that, and as i said the nickname basically erases her identity. but at the same time i think feminism fails to acknowledge that some people, for their own psychological reasons, need this kind of relationship. a girl who never had a father and craves that relationship isn’t going to stop craving just because feminism tells her it’s not the strong thing to do. and a man who is admitting his own old-fashioned masculine bias is at least grappling with the issue. i’m not a wholehearted supporter of eastwood’s films, i just think they’re interesting for this reason. no one lives in a perfect feminist world–men like this exist, and women like this exist. and i wouldn’t expect a man who is acknowledging his own male bias to be capable of producing a feminist film. his films are what they are. not at all perfect or politically correct, but they are an expression of one man’s view of the world. or, more specifically, one old-fashioned man’s attempts to grapple with a modern world that is increasingly out of his control. the very fact that it expresses itself in his preference for male characters who dominate women is interesting to me.

I actually think you are being too kind to it.

I was sickened by the relationship between the two — Eastwood’s approach is a giant leap backwards for feminism. The young “girlie” who is nothing without the big strong man — can’t do it without him, needs him, etc. (I could say more – but don’t want to spoil it.) The “mo-cuish-le” thing was also pathetic — could she not learn what the word meant without his help? Given her rise in popularity, all she had to do was read an article about herself. But no, Eastwood’s women are nothing without men. (Remember the wife in Mystic River? She doesn’t even have a voice.)

I could go on and on about what else is wrong with the film, but I’ve done that on plenty of other sites already. . .

yeah the all-around praise it’s getting is bizarre. hard to avoid
making boxing metaphors, but the film really does take a majorly cheap
shot. glad to find a kindred, though. my female companion didn’t like
it either…i think it must be a guy thing. most of the critics are men.

Thank god I found someone else who didn’t think this was an amazing film. I can’t believe it’s gotten so much praise! Or that Swank won the Golden Globe — her character was the least fleshed-out of any of them. Oy. I hope some of the other contenders are better, because my faith in movies is severely shaken by this one.