Matt Wanat and Leonard Engel, the coeditors of this new collection of essays, describe Clint Eastwood as “indefatigable” right off the bat (1). They are justified in doing so. Since the year 2000 Eastwood has directed and/or starred in no less than sixteen feature films. Now well into his eighties, he has recently directed himself in the much-anticipated thriller The Mule (2018). If anything, “indefatigable” is an understatement. And as sure as Eastwood hasn't shown any signs of slowing down, neither has scholarly interest in him. Case in point: this is Engel's third edited collection on Eastwood. His first was Clint Eastwood, Actor and Director: New Perspectives (2007), which focussed mainly on Eastwood's westerns. His second, New Essays on Clint Eastwood (2012), broadened the scope of the discussion to include essays on Eastwood's work outside the genre with which he is most immediately identified. It also featured a foreword by Drucilla Cornell, whose monograph Clint Eastwood and Issues of American Masculinity (2009) has become something of a touchstone among scholars working in the field. It is fitting, therefore, that Cornell provides an afterword for this collection, at once offering a retrospective updating of her own study and praising Wanat and Engel for curating a series of essays that continue to “critically engage with a director who is unquestionably one of the most important directors we have ever seen in this country” (256).

In their Introduction, Wanat and Engel give a detailed account of Eastwood's idiosyncratic methods of working, of his cinematic technique, and of the way in which his films work. The main task for them and for the bulk of the essays they have collated is to “understand a filmmaker at once straightforward and nuanced, sometimes contradictory, who is often inclined toward complex subjects delivered in story-and-character-driven narratives without obvious directorial didacticism or reflexivity but intertwined with an acting and directorial iconography laden with cultural meanings” (2). It is clear that Wanat and Engel hold Eastwood in the highest regard and see him as the quintessence of the understated cinematic auteur; that is, a man whose “direct, plainspoken on-screen and off-screen image” has resulted in films that “rarely announce their own ironies, formal structures, or generic conventions” (5). This is not, they insist, to say that Eastwood's films “lack complexity”; rather it is that his films’ complexity “lies in the varying points of view of the characters and in the director's tendency to include competing values rather than in the layering out of stylistic expression or self-referential commentary” (5).

The book deals with critically underrepresented films, with essays on films including The Eiger Sanction (1975), The Gauntlet (1977), and Firefox (1982). A notable chapter is Raymond Foery's “Empowering the Victim: Eastwood as a Director of Women,” which extends the concerns of Cornell to consider Eastwood's “remarkably sensitive direction of women” (70) in films like Million Dollar Baby (2004) and Changeling (2008). Also of note is W. D. Phillips's “Why Are We Stuck in Low-Earth Orbit? Sexagenarian Space Cowboys and the Failing Body of Their American Dream,” in which he offers expert analysis of the “old man Eastwood” character (60). There is also a substantial number of essays that focus on American Sniper (2014). David Buchanan's “Another Fistful: The American Sniper Franchise and Clint Eastwood's Post-9/11 American West War Film as Neo-western” offers a damning verdict on Eastwood's film as “just one more step” in the construction of Chris Kyle's “hagiography” (171). Contrariwise, Landon Lutrick's “The Legend: Situating American Sniper in Clint Eastwood's Canon” argues that the film is “complex and subtle” and “challenges the nature of legends” (197). Dennis Rothermel's personable “With Some Trepidation, I Suggested That We See American Sniper” is a fascinating account that argues that American Sniper is an “anti-war war film” (204). Adding something a little different to the collection are Craig Rinne's study of Eastwood the icon in “Manufactured in America: Clint Eastwood, Chrysler's Halftime in America, and the Republican National Convention” and a fascinating interview conducted by Paul Seydor with Eastwood's long-time editor, Joel Cox.

Overall, Wanat and Engel – and their contributors – have much to say on Eastwood that is enlightening and instructive. That they manage to offer original perspectives and insights after all that has been written on Eastwood is a credit to them. This kind of critical writing is designed to enlarge our experience of the works under consideration. It is a significant contribution to academic criticism on Clint Eastwood and should appeal to anyone who is intrigued by this complex, contradictory, and multifaceted cultural icon.