Walking Tall

Phil Karlson films the true-ish legend of Buford Pusser, the Tennessee sheriff who took a hickory club to the moonshiners and gambling bosses of McNairy County and got most of his body cut up for the trouble. Joe Don Baker plays him as a wall of righteous stubbornness, and the film backs him without a flicker of doubt. It came out of nowhere to become a colossal sleeper hit, and spawned sequels, a television series and a Rock-shaped remake. The politics are pure law-and-order wish fulfilment and it commits to them completely. Every rural revenge picture of the seventies is standing in its shadow. Sincere in a way the cynical imitators never managed.