Fantastic!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Movie based on the real life exploits of Buford Pusser. He was a sheriff in a small town in Tennessee who, almost single-handedly, cleaned up the corruption that was running the town. In the movie he' s played by Joe Don Baker. He also has a wife (Elizabeth Hartman) and two young kids. For trying to clean up the town Pusser is attacked multiple times, almost has his car driven off the road, is shot at and, in the most disgusting scenes, the family dog is shot dead and his wife is brutally murdered.I saw this when I was 11 at a drive-in. I remember loving it and being shocked by the amount of blood and violence (it was, for its time, VERY bloody). Seeing it today it's slow, way too long and not as bloody as what we get today. Sometimes it plays like an R rated TV movie with flat direction, silly dialogue and crappy music. Also the filmmakers show no shame when they push the graphic killings of the dog and wife into the audiences face. Good acting by Baker and Hartman only help to a point. Mostly I was bored and disgusted. Only for drive-in movie completists.

Seeing WALKING TALL today for the first time, it's clear how just influential this film has been in the intervening decades. The story of one man clearing up the criminal element in his town has been done to death but here it feels fresh and electrifying; some might say that a fellow like Steven Seagal owes his whole career to this movie, with films like FIRE DOWN BELOW looking and feeling almost identical. The unique hook that WALKING TALL has is that it's based on a true story.Joe Don Baker stars in his best role as the larger-than-life Buford Pusser, a normal fight who stands up for justice and ends up becoming the sheriff of a small town in the process. It's an action picture with some incredibly violent set-pieces and showdowns, but it never forgets to focus equally on character and plotting, making it one of those rarities: an all-round action flick as every bit as good as a big budget mainstream Hollywood film. Sequels and a remake followed, but none could successfully re-capture the original's raw power.

Revisiting films I saw for the first and only time when they were originally released can be interesting. This picture was a stunner back in 1973, and though it's held up pretty well over the decades, I can see how a lot of modern day viewers would find the character of Buford Pusser to be morally objectionable given his methods in bringing corrupt criminals to justice. The one scene that completely violates political correctness today had to do with Buford's son Mike (Leif Garrett) walking into the hospital with a rifle after the ambush! Holy smokes, could you just see that happening today? The kid would have gotten arrested and sent into counseling.Buford's (Joe Don Baker) childhood buddy Lutie (Ed Call) had a pretty good description for The Lucky Spot - he called it a shopping center for sinners! I thought that was pretty colorful, but nowhere close to accurately describing what a bunch of Neanderthals the average citizen of Selmer, Tennessee was. Knowing that this was based on a true story, it's pretty chilling that characters like this could actually take over a small town to this degree, especially the ones you rely on to enforce the law. I'd have to say that Gene Evans' portrayal of Sheriff Al Thurman ranks right up there with Brian Dennehy's Sheriff Teasle in "First Blood" as one of the dumbest and most corrupt lawmen in film. And I watch a lot of westerns.On the other hand, there is one scene that brings the 'dated' argument to a whole new level when you stop to think about it. When Buford and his wife (Elizabeth Hartman) purchased their first home, they paid six thousand dollars for a house, three hundred acres and two catfish ponds! Say what you will, but that sounded like a dream sequence to me.

Unfortunately the IMDb allows only comments up to 1000 words and I was so much taken in by WALKING TALL that my comment got longer, so please go to my entry in the message board, if you want to read the whole review! :-) ... :-)) I love movies with balls and brains and this is one of 'em! :-) OK, I know this movies has its small shortcomings, because it does not belong to the category of over-financed Hollywood-junk (which is a movie-category established by the film industry (!) in the later 80ies and beginning 90ties consisting of movies costing anywhere from 50 to 200 million bucks and which look like most designer-stuff: well crafted but hollow), but to the category of a small independently financed B-picture. Don't get me wrong, this ain't a movie financed on a shoestring-budget, this is just one of those movies, where the producers did not have million's to burn. It's very decently made and 95% perfect, just here or there you think, well, they could have tried one more take or something similar. But anyway, are you going to the cinema to see a technically perfect movie and receive joy from seeing designer-tailored action-scenes, or do you go to the movies or buy a DVD to enjoy yourself with a movie full of balls and brain? If you belong to the 1st category, I suggest you save the time reading this and forget about watching this flick. But if you belong to the later category, then this is something for you, you gonna enjoy this roller-coaster-flick! Especially if - as is the case with me - 70ies B-flicks are your cup of tea. They certainly are mine! I won't dwell here on the storyline of WALKING TALL (you can find details elsewhere here), it's probably enough to point out that the title is the program and that our hero's tag-line is "walk softly and carry a big stick" (or - as the old Latins said - "suaviter in modo, fortiter in re"). Yeah, that's what he does and he uses that big stick to clean house very properly. I do not know, which part of the story is actually "fact" (based on incidents in the life of Buford Pusser) and which parts are fiction (that could be a lot, since the disclaimer reads that this picture is based on "incidents suggested by the life of BP", which sounds like something, but in fact can mean nearly everything or nothing at all), but IF just 50% of the story-line happened in some way or another, this guy must have had enormous luck and 7 lives. Already the incidents, when somebody tries to kill him, amount to at least 5! The movie is quite brutal, at least for a flick made in the middle of the 70ies. Quite a lot of dead and quite a high number of severely beaten-up bodies, but there ain't that much of it on-screen. Just the first beating of our hero is really tense and was probably only outdone by Mel Gibson's Christ a couple decades later. Of course it looks a bit unrealistic to see Joe Don Baker in a T-shirt so soaked with blood, because anyone loosing that much of it would certainly be dead, but then again Phil Karlson had a point to make and wanted to make sure we'd get it: our hero had been severely wounded by the villains of the town and now he had a task to handle, do what a man has to do, simply WALK TALL! This movie is pure 70ies magnetism, a wonderful ride into rural Americana, with so many classic (partly stereo-)types, wonderful original characters, hardly any cardboard ones, and actors indeed looking like someone you could meet at any corner of such a town. This is what lifts such classic productions over the Hollywood-product we get today: we do see real people doing things, that could at least be possible (while when we watch Die Hard IV everybody should know that 90% of the action-scenes there could simply never happen, because they are against the laws of physics). Here you got a lot of beat-ups, car-chases, shoot-outs, more beatings, cars driving in houses, all things that normally don't happen if the police does its job, but things that COULD happen, that are physically possible. And they are staged with zest and verve by a veteran director in the twilight of his career, who took this job at the age of 66 and wanted to give it a last (which then was his penultimate) try. And he does deliver ALL the goods, pulls all triggers. He certainly knew this could very well be his last effort, so why not give the best. With 4 decades (!!) of movie-making experience, Phil Karlson (who also directed THE SILENCERS and THE WRECKING CREW-entries in the lovely Matt Helm-series and quite a couple very good noir's and western) certainly knew how to build up a good storyline and how to stage it as well as possible with whatever budget he had available. ...ATTENTION ! This comment here is NOT COMPLETE, because the IMDb allows only 1000 words and I wrote more, so please go to my entry in the message board (if you liked to read my few cents) to get the whole review and to be able to comment on it! :-)