Walking Tall

Buford Pusser leaves wrestling and returns with his family to the county where he was born, a small place in Tennessee. He soon learns the arrangement there: gambling, illegal liquor and prostitution operate openly and the law is part of it. One night he is beaten at a club and badly hurt. He goes to court; the jury convicts nobody. So he stands for sheriff and wins. Then he starts walking about with a stick and raiding the clubs one by one. Phil Karlson directs. Joe Don Baker plays Pusser. The narrative rests on a real man; Buford Pusser served as sheriff in Tennessee and his story was known locally. The film was an unexpected commercial success in America and became a series with sequels. The matter it treats is the law not working; the narrative presents that as a problem one man can settle himself. Its stance is contested; violence is justified and the method outside the law is defended directly. Differences between what the real Pusser said and the documents were argued over afterwards. The violence is explicit for its period and the scenes are not drawn out. Who it is for: anyone curious about seventies American genre cinema and narratives based on real events. Who it is not for: the violence is justified, the narrative one sided, and the characters one dimensional.