Clint Eastwood is under his own direction in the role of a recently on-the-wagon and unrepentently womanizing newspaperman, busily trying to prove a condemned man's innocence on the day of execution. The detective work is pretty sketchy, pretty shaky. But the plotting of the movie takes a backseat to its pacing, the feeling of continuousness as the clock ticks toward the literal deadline at midnight, the slow and steady pulse, the sustained focus of attention undistracted by superficial and superfluous diversions. Eastwood has a sure sense of how long to spend in a scene, giving it its due, neither more nor less, without hurry or impatience. (An Eastwood movie can be counted on to run well over two hours, just as certainly as a Woody Allen can be expected to come in at under an hour and a half.) And the central character, given automatic stature and authority once Eastwood stepped into his shoes, gains an added dimension from his significant points of overlap with the actor: his unapologetic interest in, and success with, much younger women, and his late-in-life fatherhood. (Woody Allen once again comes to mind: Eastwood's only contemporary peer as a "personal" filmmaker.) The star's on-screen daughter is indeed his real-life daughter, Francesca Fisher-Eastwood, following Kyle and Alison through the nepotistic turnstile. Her real-life mother, Frances Fisher, the madam in Unforgiven, has a small part here as a hard-nosed D.A. And the on-screen mother, and cheated-on wife, is the always interesting Diane Venora, who first came to notice in Bird. Both of these adult actresses testify mutely to Eastwood's ability, contrary to the evidence of Sondra Locke, to maintain cordial relations with the women in his life. There is an honesty about this sexual subplot, as distinct from a vanity about it, and a fairness about it as well, extending all the way to his uncoy display of the ravages of time on his tall-pine physique. He perhaps looks pretty good for a man of almost seventy. He unarguably looks nowhere near as good as he used to. But nor does he look as delusional as, for example, Warren Beatty or Robert Redford while trying to disguise the fact. If he still wants to go after the young lovelies, he'll still have to take off his shirt, too. Gasp, or gag, if you must. Isaiah Washington, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Denis Leary, James Woods. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd
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