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List Price: $19.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 38398
Released: September 2, 2003 |
| Our Price: $4.87 |
| Used Price: $2.45 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Clint Eastwood plays a veteran cop who gets stuck with a rookie cop (Charlie Sheen) to chase down a German criminal (Raul Julia.)
Description of The Rookie:
This somewhat desperate-looking project pairs the aging Clint Eastwood (he also directed) with a younger actor (Charlie Sheen) who was hot at the time this film was made (1990). There's certainly nothing wrong with that strategy, but it would have helped if Eastwood had a decent story to wrap around his commercial strategy. The senior star plays a grizzled cop with a smooth-faced preppie (Sheen) as a new partner. Their odd-couple shtick is as predictable as one would expect, with each man approaching the same job with a wholly different set of convictions from the other. Inexplicably, Eastwood also hired Raul Julia and Sonia Braga to plays Germans, but then the scene most people remember in this movie is Braga's rape of Eastwood--indeed an unusual moment. --Tom Keogh
The Rookie Reviews:
Not typical Eastwood 
2009-11-05 - The movie is good, but not up to the usual standards of a Clint Eastwood film.
The Rookie 
2009-09-14 - I really enjoy having and watching classic movies like this one. The younger generation doesn't even remember it. It is a keeper.
Eastwood on automatic pilot but... 
2008-09-27 - Clint Eastwood on automatic pilot is a lot better than some peoples best films, so make no mistake this may be the worst film ever that he directed himself but its still pretty good. In fact for me it would have been 3.5 stars.
Its really a Dirty Harry film under another name, and with a decent cast including the always watchable Charlie Sheen its an easy way to pass an hour and a half. There are a couple of laugh out loud moments, especially the seat belt gag.
Of course the reason to watch the film is the man himself. Aged 61 when this was made he was still in top shape and is effortlessly cool throughout the film. Some of the dialogue isn't as good as that in the classic Dirty Harry films but there's still enough laconic lines for the Eastwood fan to get by on.
So its no classic by Eastwood standards, but as comedy/cop/thrillers go, which also happens to star a living legend, its a dam sight better than you might expect given it rather poor reputation.
Mercifully Forgotten 
2008-08-20 - Clint Eastwood has always been one of the biggest movie stars in the world and it's not that we always want to see him do the same things over and over again...but he doesn't have a very good track record when it comes to comedy. If you've suffered through BRONCO BILLY or PINK CADILLAC, you know what I mean. They work about as well as playing Dirty Harry in a clown suit.
From what I could stomach of THE ROOKIE, it's the same thing. I think most of it was meant to be a comedy. I think. If it was meant as a comedy, THE ROOKIE puts EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE into the Classics category of comedies.
And after 20-some years of Charlie Sheen, it's obvious he got where he did because of his father. In his biggest roles, PLATOON and WALL STREET, he's the new recruit, the empty suit, the fresh-faced nobody who barely shows up on film. Oddly enough, he's shown more life in his hooker-cluttered party life and repellent divorce from Denise Richards--but not as a character we could ever care about. After reading Sheen's incredibly ugly texts about hoping that Denise dies like her "bald mother" (she was fighting cancer), I'm even less impressed by anything such a jerk does in film or television.
To be honest, I'd completely forgotten about this piece of junk until I remembered feeling embarassed for Clint during the scene where he cusses for a TV news reporter. Painful.
A lot better (and different) than its reputation suggests....
2008-07-03 - I had pretty low expectations going into this film (the reviews have been generally negative), but I was surprised how much I liked it, and surprised by its tone. It has a reputation of being the 6th Dirty Harry movie in disguise, which is not true. Sure, Clint's character, Nick, has many similar qualities to that of Dirty Harry, but this film is a lot different than the Dirty Harry films.
The film is rather dark, both literally and figuratively. The film takes place mostly at night in dark interiors, and aside from a few one liners from Eastwood, Sheen, Julia, and a few select cops, it's a mostly serious film. It's also pretty violent, and not really in a cartoonish way. There's a scene in a bar where Charlie, looking for information about Clint (who has been taken hostage), spits a fireball in a bartender's face, beats up several patrons, beats up one guard dog and shoots another (even though we don't see the bullet hit the dog), and burns the place down. Sheen's girlfriend in the film (played by Lara Flynn Boyle) is nearly strangled in a pretty savage scene. It does have a light ending, but overall, it's pretty brutal. If it does have to be compared to any Dirty Harry film, it can be compared to Sudden Impact, the fourth Dirty Harry film and the only one directed by Eastwood himself. That's the darkest of the Dirty Harry films, both aesthetically and literally.
Many thought the film was overlong (running 121 minutes), but it wasn't. There aren't any superfluous scenes in it. They're needed to give background information on Sheen and his character. It has some great action scenes in it, especially the first chase scene (also shot at night). The film does have a few problems, though. Julia's accent flucuates a bit (even though it's not an awful accent), some of the dialogue is silly, and some of the minor performances (particularly that of the Lieutentant) are overdone. If you like Eastwood (as I do), this is worth checking out at least once, maybe twice. If not, you can skip it.
