I only saw it the one time after it was initially released, in a Jerry Lewis theatre (the chain still existed but I think they were on their way out at that point) with 2 guys I knew from school who were very right-wing (we were obviously very different in terms of our "philosophies" but we shared a liking for Clint Eastwood movies and a love for booze and mind-altering chemicals; I don't know what happened to the one guy, but I stayed friends with the other one, and he became a school teacher in Nevada, which does cause me an occasional sleepless night when I contemplate it). Thoroughly ridiculous, I remember enjoying the picture immensely. Eastwood plays an alcoholic cop asssigned to transport a prostitute (Sondra Locke, his real-life girlfriend at the time; their break-up was less than amicable) to testify at a mob trial. It is NOT one of Eastwood's better performances; he seems to be sleep-walking his way through it, evidently equating alcoholism with somnambulism. Locke and some talented actors like Pat Hingle attempt to add some gravitas to the nonsense, but they can't pull it off, though they get an A for effort. For me, the height of idiocy comes at the end, when the corrupt police force lines up on both sides of the road, armed to the teeth, prepared to shoot to pieces the armored bus that Eastwood and Locke have commandeered. As Eastwood and Locke pass through the "gauntlet", the guns blaze with a deafening roar, shattering windows, tearing through the structure of the bus, shredding steel and plastic-- and the one guy I was with, who was only slightly to the left of the Ku Klux Klan when it came to politics, said, "Any of these brain surgeons ever think of shooting out the tires?" Of course, that was part of Eastwood's charm for me. He made some quality pictures, but he also made more than a few that were awful and/or ridiculous, but even those could be entertaining, and I remember "The Gauntlet" as being entertaining. Idiotic, but entertaining.