You Got To Work That Clint-orus: THE ROOKIE

The Rookie is the worst film Clint Eastwood has ever made.

I knew it was bad. I saw it for the first time when I was maybe ten, and I vividly recall a) it doing nothing for me, and b) feeling that, given my relative crassness as a ten-year old moviegoer and my predilection for the film's subject matter, the film's inability to rouse me was more its fault than mine.

Time did not work in The Rookie's favor. If anything, it's worse now. I feel bad for slamming Kelly's Heroes so hard last week. That movie is boring, yes, but it's not offensive. It's not the Anti-God. I'd rather watch it once a year for the rest of my life than sit through five minutes of The Rookie again. Here's the big difference: Kelly's Heroes screws up the treatment of a complex subject, whereas The Rookie handles the single easiest film genre of all time--the violent buddy cop actioner--with all the adroitness of a retard trying to fuck a door knob.

The Rookie is worse than Space Cowboys. It's worse than City Heat. It makes Pink Cadillac look tolerable. My problem with the film are legion:

--If I were the fabulously wealthy mastermind behind a stolen car ring, and I had an army of goons at my bidding, why in Sweet Home Alabama would I participate in the actual car boostings?

--Good-guy female lead: Lara Flynn Boyle. 'Nuff said.

--Buddy cop movies live or die off the dichotomy between the buddies. You can go good cop/bad cop, sane cop/crazy cop, rookie cop/old cop, but you have to delineate things. It makes for interesting conflict. What do we have here? Grumpy cop/grumpy cop. Charlie Sheen, the ostensible rookie, is broody and self-destructive. Veteran Eastwood is gruff and self-destructive. The differences here are staggering.

--Sonia Braga is supposed to be the bad guy's hot, evil squeeze, but she looks like Jaye Davidson and Edward James Olmos got fused together in a telepod. Plus, the scene where she rapes Eastwood (yep, you read that right) is unintentionally ugly on so many levels.

--Lead baddy Raul Julia is wasted. If you've ever wanted to see what happens when great actors can't hide their contempt for their material, check out Julia here. He just looks defeated, and it's an additional shame, considering how he brought such improvisatory wit and grace as a similar-styled heavy in the otherwise-excretable Tequila Sunrise. I also don't get the decision to make him speak with an awful German accent. Julia was Latino. His crew of flunkies in the film was Latino. His character, on the other hand, was German. It does not scan.

--It's not funny but tries too hard anyways. Eastwood's Nick Pulovski feels like an attempt to intentionally satirize his Harry Callahan, except nothing he does/says is funny.

--It's not dramatic but tries too hard anyways. I don't care that Sheen's character is still racked with guilt over his brother's death. I don't care that his rich father still resents him for it. Come to think of it, I don't think Sheen cared either; cocaine is a hell of a drug.

The Rookie is such a grandiose, epic failure that I wonder why it was even included in the Clint Eastwood set. It can't be for completist purposes, since there are only ten films in the set to begin with. It can't be because people other than me like it--its Rotten Tomatoes rating is an admirable 50%. It can't even be because it's so bad, it's good--it's not. There are so many other films from Clint's Warner Bros. canon that were neglected in favor of The Rookie. Of the WB films Eastwood made in the '70s, there are only two: Kelly's Heroes and Dirty Harry. How about putting in The Outlaw Josey Wales or even that fucking orangutan movie in lieu of The Rookie? Fucking none of his 1980s oeuvre is included; why not Tightrope or Honkytonk Man or Bronco Billy or Bird? I'd even take Heartbreak Ridge, and that’s a movie that ends with Eastwood triumphantly liberating Grenada. I’ll reiterate 'cause it bears repeating: a movie that considers our military action on Grenada during the 1980s to be a just and unquestionable moral imperative is more vital than this rancid piece of offal.

Maybe whoever put this set together wants to show what Eastwood was willing to make before he put total faith in his own interests/passions. It's well known that The Rookie was his attempt to reconnect with fans after a string of ambitious but uncommercial failures, most notably White Hunter, Black Heart, a thinly veiled study of John Huston during the filming of The African Queen. That's the reason The Rookie feels so nakedly, contemptuously formulaic; Eastwood was pandering to make those Benjamins, and it shows. There's no care, no engagement, either in elevating the film through technical virtuosity or in using it to parody the buddy cop genre as a whole. Eastwood's character represents a clear regression for the actor/director; he'd publicly denounced playing this kind of violent antihero simply for popcorn thrills, and yet, here he is, chasing after cars and outracing explosions. The engineer of this set might have included The Rookie as a cautionary tale, but if so, why didn't they include White Hunter, Black Heart to help contextualize Eastwood's decision to play below his pay grade?

I'll tell you why: dollars and sense. That’s why The Rookie has resurfaced over a number of far worthier Eastwood vehicles. Dig it:

1)Warner Bros. put out this set.
2)They also own the rights to Two and a Half Men.
3)Charlie Sheen stars in Two and a Half Men.
4)He’s also in The Rookie.

Cross-Promoting 101.

Fuck this movie in the face.