Pink Cadillac
        
Director: Buddy Van Horn
Year: 1989
Rating: 5.0
My guess is that when there are Lifetime Tributes to Clint Eastwood, this film is passed over as quietly as possible. On the other hand, if Bernadette Kewpie Doll Peters ever has a career tribute, this might get a lot of play. Especially her dramatic recitation of when her baby was born. Must have had the audience in tears. Of laughter. No, that is cruel. I have liked Peters forever but that was such a corny - let her have her moment scene that was pointless. In a film like this that runs over two-hours, editing out about 30-minutes of this would have been merciful. This isn't a terrible film - just an overly long ordinary one and Eastwood should never be ordinary. His role could have been played by any tough but kind looking actor. Eastwood had a weakness for on occasion mixing things up and appearing in lame comedies - Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can come to mind. The thing is that those did well at the box-office. One of the great mysteries of life. The director of this film, Buddy Van Horn, only helmed three films in his career - all Clint Eastwood films with Any Which Way being one of them. Horn was a stuntman - often doubling for Eastwood - and I expect Eastwood was returning the favor.



Eastwood plays Nowak, a legendary skip tracer. He brings in his man with a party hat of tricks and disguises. And the punch in the face if needed. The latest assignment that he accepts is a woman who has skipped out on her $25,000 bail bond. In a pink Cadillac that makes finding her fairly easy - even in Reno. Lou Ann (Peters) is running away from her loser husband who refused to come forward to take the blame for counterfeit money found in their trailer. Peters being the wife of trailer trash is the hardest thing to believe in the film. The husband and his low-life amphetamine taking friends belong to a White Supremacist militia that is getting ready for the Uprising when they can wipe out blacks, Jews, immigrants. In other words, Trump supporters. They don't call themselves MAGA but that is only because they came before the scourge did.



When Lou Ann goes on the run, she takes her husband's pink Cadillac not knowing that it has $250,000 of money that the militia plans on using for weapons. They spend most of their time practicing firing on cut-outs of police officers. Lou Ann thinks the money is counterfeit and goes off to Reno hoping to make a killing at the dice table. Nowak finds her in about five minutes and goes all soft. I mean who wouldn't. Peters and her curls. Well, not soft so much as soft-hearted. The militia comes after her as well. The film uncomfortably tries to meander between drama, action and comedy - but there is nothing funny about white racists - even dumb-ass ones like this. Maybe in 1989 they were. Not now. By the way, when they go into a Reno lounge that is Jim Carrey performing on stage - doing his short-arm routine. Five years before Ace Ventura. There are a lot of Eastman's films that I have never gotten around to and I have been slowly catching up. With Eastwood, you have to take the bad with the good.