Walking Tall

1973 dumb action movie

Rating: 10/20

Plot: Bufford Pusser takes over as sheriff in a crime-ridden town and starts hitting people with a piece of wood.

This is "suggested by certain events" in the story of real-life hero Bufford Pusser, a man with the name Bufford Pusser. It's all melodrama and machismo, poorly directed with whatever the opposite of grace and style might be, the kind of clumsy thing that's about as realistic as a wrestling match. Everything that happens in this movie seems like it is happening for far too long. The movie's two hours of action, and it feels like it. Music by somebody named Walter Scharf, and it sounds almost exactly like what you'd imagine Scharf sounding like. A Scharf score is exactly what this movie deserves. Nobody deserves the terrible Johnny Mathis song at the end of this. That's the kind of thing they could use to torture terrorists in the Middle East.

This is the type of movie that would be proud to torture terrorists in the Middle East.

The mythic hero-making, along with the gun-nut propaganda, is borderline absurd. Joe Don Baker is not a good actor, but he's big enough and has something that is almost like charisma. It's a smelly sort of charisma. With lines about how they want to "nail his ass to the cross" and "an ordinary man" not being able to survive some of the things Pusser goes through, there's this effort to make the character into a right-wing icon or a Christ figure. Or both.

The most emblematic moment is when a dog dies and Bufford Pusser drags it into the house to show his freaked-out children.