Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Coogan, an Arizona deputy sheriff goes to New York to pick up a prisoner. While escorting the prisoner to the airport, he escapes and Coogan heads into the city to recapture him.
Coogan's Bluff is a competent but unremarkable fish-out-of-water crime thriller. The plot is functional but thin — a simple pursuit narrative with predictable beats and little dramatic tension beyond the clash of cultures between the laconic Western lawman and the urban New York setting. Eastwood is charismatic and watchable in an early transitional role, elevating the material somewhat, and the supporting cast holds up adequately. Siegel's direction is efficient with decent location shooting in late-60s New York lending period authenticity, though the cinematography is journeyman-level rather than distinctive. The film has some novelty as an early Eastwood-Siegel collaboration and as a precursor to the fish-out-of-water cop genre (essentially a proto-blueprint for Beverly Hills Cop), but it's still fairly conventional in execution. The ending resolves without much surprise or satisfaction, wrapping up the chase in a perfunctory fashion.