Child's Play

By J.C.

JOE KIDD

Directed by JOHN STURGES Screenplay by ELMORE LEONARD

For the first time in movie history, Clint Eastwood wears a derby.

Other than that, it's business pretty much as usual in Joe Kidd, a leisurely Eastwood western in which the star is presumably recuperating from the rigors of his recent Dirty Harry and Play Misty for Me. In the title role, Eastwood is the leading maverick of Sinola, N. Mex., a town in the grip of a land war between the Anglo settlers and disgruntled Mexicans, led by a firebrand named Luis Chama (John Saxon).

When Chama roughs up one of his hired hands, Clint signs on to guide a party of vigilantes to Chama's lair. The vigilante leader is a lowdown land baron (the redoubtable Robert Duvall) whose holdings are threatened by Chama. "We can cut your ears off," the land baron warns Chama partisans. "We can cut something else off too."

Clint quickly concludes he has joined up with the wrong side. He rights matters soon enough, even going so far as to drive a locomotive smack through some of Sinola's newest buildings. The set seems to have been constructed solely with this event in mind, looking as it does like something plucked from the window of F.A.O. Schwarz.

As for Clint, he ends up getting the girl and doesn't look bad in the derby at all. qedJ.C.

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