This coffee table book is a tribute to Hollywood's legendary actor, director, producer and composer, Clint Eastwood, on his sixty years of achievement both in front and behind the camera. Richard Schickel himself is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and a distinguished biographer of Charles Chaplin, Woody Allen and Marlon Brando. A bonus DVD features a bio of Clint directed by Schickel with clips from 35 films in 35 years of association with Warner Brothers.

In an introduction, Eastwood states that he is a "genre" moviemaker and that made possible creating variations of a basic theme, a chance to refresh a film in question, making it new for the audience and the director. Clint truly began his career in the spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars and he is the guy who drifts into town, encounters ordinary people oppressed by some kind of evil from which he delivers them and thereafter departs without explanation.

His directorial debut was the scary Play Misty For Me, a dark study of male sexual carelessness and female revenge. He became a force to be reckoned with. Dirty Harry made him a superstar. He went on to become director and gave the world a chance to see his directorial skills with some great movies like Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima, Gran Torino. Acclaimed for acting, directing, and musical compositions, Clint Eastwood has won several Oscars and is a true cinematic great.

Clint began with Rawhide, a western TV series that ran for seven years with 217 episodes. A giant leap was from Rawhide to A Fistful of Dollars - a Sergio Leone spaghetti western, followed by For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Recent classics by him are Mystic River, The Bridges of Madison County and Invictus - the last being on Nelson Mandela. The production and critical reception of Eastwood's most important films are recounted in this book in detail; especially outstanding is Schickel's analysis of the still controversial Dirty Harry. Schickel zeros in on Eastwood's appeal, showing through his acute interpretive readings of the films how the actor combines the masculine authority and repressed rage of Gary Cooper and John Wayne with an almost postmodern ironic self-consciousness.

Time and Life film critic for 43 years, Schickel penned a substantive biography in 1997. What is impressive is his intimate familiarity with Eastwood and his work. He has known the star for 33 years and in the introduction reviews the career and recalls personal moments with Eastwood. A film-by-film account of his oeuvre follows, from the mid-1960s Italian spaghetti westerns and his breakthrough in Dirty Harry to his recent, commercially bold treatments of race relations, Gran Torino and Invictus. Schickel assesses each movie with acute insight.

Over 300 spectacular images, including dynamic stills from memorable screen performances and revealing behind-the-scenes photos, are accompanied by Richard Schickel's incisive and illuminating commentary. This is a wonderfully well-written and illustrated book providing commentary that will have you admiring Clint for his achievements.

- Review by P.P. Ramachandran (first published on the 13th June 2010)