Walking Tall

The fact that the remake of this classic is opening in a few days persuaded me to review the original Joe Don Baker ass-kicker of a movie. Baker will always be in my mind as Buford Pusser, a man who chooses to walk tall no matter what the consequences that may befall. After retiring from wrestling, he returns home with his wife, Elizabeth Hartman (Edwina in Clint Eastwood's strangest film "the Beguiled), and children, Dawn Lyn and Leif Garret (heh) in tow, only to find corruption. Luckily Buford carries a BIG stick and knows how to swing it. At a tad over two hours, this film is almost 2 times the film that the remake is time-wise, but a million times better than it entertainment and story-wise. A tad dated, but it still holds up pretty well My Grade: A

One great movie! Joe Don Baker does a great job portraying Buford Pusser. This movies deals with a man that has just givin up pro wrestlng because he is sick and tired of being controlled by someone else. He returns home to Tennessee, and finds the same thing going on. His mother warns him to ignore it, but by accident, he finds out the hard way how these people operate. His battle is an uphill one. First, he is jailed for robbing the local bar. He acts as his own defense at the trial and wins. Then the local sheriff tries to kill him, and is killed himself. Once Pusser is elected sheriff, the fight really begins. He eventually cleans out the graft and corruption in McNairy County, and then he is ambushed, and his wife is tragically killed. Pusser finally has one last showdown with the people at the Lucky Spot. I would like to have seen Joe Don Baker do the other two movies. This movie is a real tear jerker at the end.

All you folks complaining that this is amateur film-making because the boom is visible in several shots don't understand how movies are made. In order to get good sound on dialog, the mike is hung very close to the subject. It is almost always captured on film, but in the area which is not meant to be seen by an audience, as the square film frame is supposed to be matted at top and bottom by the projectionist when shown in a theater, or by the technician when transferring film to video. In the case of Walking Tall, whoever supervised the transfer to video did so "open matte", meaning they transfered the ENTIRE film frame without proper matting, hence the visible boom. This was not carelessness on the part of the filmmakers, but on the part of whoever put it out on video. You'd see microphone booms in Star Wars if it were transfered to video this way. When I saw Walking Tall in the theater, it did not have visible booms. Blame the video release, not the filmmakers.