{"id":621597,"date":"2026-06-04T23:22:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T23:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/621597\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T23:22:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T23:22:16","slug":"clint-eastwood-movies-the-underrated-film-more-people-should-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/621597\/","title":{"rendered":"Clint Eastwood movies: The underrated film more people should see"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Clint Eastwood<\/a>, who has officially retired<\/a>, directed and starred in 80 movies, and the Hollywood star has several hidden gems buried within his filmography.<\/p>\n

The 96-year-old\u2019s widely known classics include Sergio Leone\u2019s Dollars trilogy, including The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, crime drama Dirty Harry<\/a>, revisionist western Unforgiven and boxing weepie Million Dollar Baby \u2013 but one film riding beneath the surface is White Hunter, Black Heart.<\/p>\n

The film, released in 1990, was a box office flop upon release, grossing just $2m (\u00a31.4m) from a $24m (\u00a317.8m) budget. But over the years, it\u2019s generated a cult status, with many agreeing it\u2019s his filmmaking peak before winning an Oscar for Unforgiven just two years later.<\/p>\n

\"ClintClint Eastwood has officially retired from films (Getty Images for AFI)<\/p>\n

Eastwood\u2019s directorial efforts beforehand included crime dramas (Play Misty for Me \u2013 1971; Sudden Impact \u2013 1986) and several westerns<\/a> (High Plains Drifter \u2013\u00a01973;The Outlaw Josey Wales \u2013 1976; Heartbreak Ridge \u2013 1986), but the late 1980s saw him start deviating from the expected genre by making a biopic of saxophonist Charlie Parker (Bird \u2013 1988) as well as White Hunter, Black Heart. The film is an adventure drama about film director John Wilson, who becomes increasingly erratic as he makes a film on location in Africa.<\/p>\n

White Hunter, Black Heart is based on Peter Viertel\u2019s 1953 book of the same name, which is a thinly disguised account of his experiences working on 1951 film The African Queen starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn. <\/p>\n

Eastwood\u2019s character in White Hunter, Black Heart, then, is based on The African Queen \u2018s director, John Huston. It was posited that Huston spent much of the film\u2019s gruelling shoot in the Congo and Uganda, swigging whiskey and hunting big game. <\/p>\n

In White Hunter, Black Heart \u2013\u00a0a riveting tale of an uncontrollable ego \u2013 Wilson is shown to become increasingly interested in tracking down one particular elephant, much to the frustration of the cast and crew around him.<\/p>\n

\"ClintClint Eastwood in ‘White Hunter, Black Heart’ (Warner Bros)<\/p>\n

Viertel co-wrote the script with James Bridges (The China Syndrome) and Burt Kennedy, who wrote Ride Lonesome and Comanche Station \u2013 westerns directed by Budd Boetticher in 1959 and 1960, respectively.<\/p>\n

Eastwood is one of the most successful actors-turned-directors, and is known for his quick-speed directorial style, often wrapping ahead of schedule and under budget. <\/p>\n

His son, composer Kyle Eastwood, who scored several of his father\u2019s films, officially confirmed Clint\u2019s retirement earlier this month. <\/p>\n

He said at a gig in November, in a video that\u2019s currently doing the rounds online: \u201cI have many fond memories of working with him. Now, he\u2019s retired, he\u2019s 95 years old. But I was very lucky to be able to work with him on quite a few films. It was a great experience for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eastwood\u2019s last film as director was the 2024 legal thriller Juror No 2, with his last screen appearance in 2021 western thriller Cry Macho.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-621597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}