Brisk and capable ... Tries for balance, acknowledging its subject’s creative and personal lapses while affirming his status ... The story of Eastwood’s rise may be familiar to some fans, but Levy relates it with relish and insight ... Levy writes well about the themes that thread through Eastwood’s mature work, and the ways his onscreen persona becomes increasingly layered and contradictory over time.
This fine-grained and deeply researched unfolding of Eastwood’s life and career subtly tweaks familiar biographical formulas in a way that parallels what Eastwood has done with typical Hollywood practices, to reveal fascinating truths about Eastwood’s art, and about cinema itself ... Levy maintains chronology with a shrewd interweaving of projects; cutting back and forth between movies in production and ones in release ... Absorbing.
Levy writes intelligently about the ubiquity of Westerns in postwar America, and he’s especially adept when tracing Eastwood’s creative trajectory ... Routinely insightful ... Levy also captures the profound efficacy of Unforgiven ... [Yet], the book’s focus on the films—which, again, can be astute—sits uncomfortably next to personal incidents involving intense violence, rampant infidelity, petty vindictiveness and even coerced sterilization ... Levy trots out these facts but is largely inattentive to their significance. He does little to attempt to reconcile the more troubling aspects of his subject, aside from passing acknowledgment that times have changed or that all people are complex.
