Classic Clint Eastwood: fast, furious, and funny. It tells a cheerfully preposterous story with great energy and a lot of style, and nobody seems more at home in this sort of action movie than Eastwood. He plays a cop again this time, but not a supercop like Dirty Harry Callahan. He’s a detective from Phoenix, and no hero (…) Eastwood directed himself again this time, and he’s a good action craftsman. He’s also good at developing relationships; despite the movie’s barrage of violence, there’s a nice pacing as his cop and hooker slog through their ordeals and begin to like and respect one another. As in most Eastwood movies, by the way, the woman’s role is a good one: Eastwood has such a macho image that maybe people haven’t noticed that his female sidekicks have minds of their own and are never intended to be merely decorative. “The Gauntlet” will no doubt be attacked in various quarters because of its violence, but it’s a harmless, pop-art type of violence, often with a comic quality (…) Eastwood himself fires his pistol only twice: once at a door, and once at a gas tank. — Roger Ebert