“Clint Eastwood turns 94 today, and it’s worth celebrating the fact that this Hollywood legend is still turning out work at a faster clip and higher quality than practically anyone in the business. There’s no way to write off Clint Eastwood.
In a perfect world, Clint Eastwood would keep making movies forever. Admittedly, prolific doesn’t always mean better, and it’s frustrating to see his fans hail every new film as a new masterpiece, when only a fraction of them are truly worthy of that title. But consider that since the turn of the century, he’s given us 17 films including “Mystic River,” “Million Dollar Baby,” “Letters from Iwo Jima,” and “American Sniper.”
Like Huston, Eastwood couldn’t be confined to a single genre, as he dabbled in a wide variety of genres, from action (you can feel the influence of Don Siegel in “”Sudden Impact””), romance (“”The Bridges of Madison County””), war (“”The Flags of Our Fathers””), musicals (“”Jersey Boys””) and, of course, Westerns. Aside from his “”shoot first, ask questions later”” character Dirty Harry — who appeared in five films spanning the ’70s and ’80s — Eastwood is most closely associated with the Western genre, which effectively replaced the earlier tradition of the friendly white-hatted hero with a calm, unassuming character with ambiguous intentions.
In his early days, Eastwood didn’t have the same power to choose projects that we see today—which might explain the seemingly silly exception of “”Every Which Way but Loose,”” though the orangutan movie proved to be his biggest box office hit, so it couldn’t have been such a bad decision. Overall, Eastwood has been remarkably consistent in his choices, creating one of the most recognizable and iconic screen characters of his generation.”