MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Rookie’: Eastwood Serves Up Warmed-Over Compost

There’s a moment early on in “The Rookie” where Clint Eastwood, playing a grizzled, combative cop named Nick Pulovski, looks over at Sonia Braga and mutters, “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.”

The moment could just as easily apply to Eastwood himself. At least that’s what he seems to be banking on here. Who else besides Eastwood freaks would want to see this bummer? As a cop thriller, “The Rookie” (citywide) is sub-par even by TV series standards. As a buddy movie--Eastwood, who also directed, is paired with Charlie Sheen--it’s one more tired entry in an already terminally fatigued genre. Even as an Eastwood vehicle--an appropriate term for a movie about a cutthroat car-theft ring--the film is a warmed-over compost.

Except for the lethally enticing Braga and a few of second-unit director Buddy Van Horn’s car-crash set pieces, the film (rated R for violence and strong language) has almost nothing to recommend it. Unless, of course, your idea of a good time is watching people being plugged continually between the eyes.

The plot is an excuse to string together as much mayhem as possible. Nick Pulovski is a direct-action kind of guy, and the movie is molded to his manias. When his first partner is blown away by the car-theft honchos, Nick’s vengeance is unleashed. His new partner, David Ackerman (Sheen), is, of course, everything Nick isn’t--polite, well-dressed, thoughtful--but it turns out he also harbors his own restless soul (big surprise). David, it turns out, has a shadowy past, which, in the Eastwood universe, means you were brought up with money and manners and the ability to read.

The universe also includes the usual pulp polarities. The two cops’ excursions into East Los Angeles are heavy on the Mexican xenophobia; the biker bars and pit-bull matches might have come out of a Cheech & Chong fever dream.

It comes as a surprise, then, that the leader of the car-theft ring, played by none other than Raul Julia, is supposed to be German . I’m all for cross-cultural casting but, despite the best efforts of the dialogue coach, Julia is about as German as Ruben Blades.

On the surface, what Eastwood does in this film seems hopelessly recidivist, right down to the “dumb Pole” stereotyping of his own character. Still, you’ve got to hand it to him. Making this film’s chief villain German seems hopelessly outdated, but maybe Eastwood is on to something. In the search for post- glasnost era movie meanies, the Germans could be staging a comeback. Eastwood, in his Dirty Harry heyday, used to beat up on psychopathic hippies. Now he’s hot for the Huns.

‘The Rookie’

Clint Eastwood: Nick Pulovski

Charlie Sheen: David Ackerman

Raul Julia: Strom

Liesl Sonia: Braga

A Warner Bros. presentation of a Malpaso production. Director Clint Eastwood. Producers Howard Kazanjian & Steven Siebert and David Valdes. Screenplay by Boaz Yakin & Scott Spiegel. Cinematographer Jack N. Green. Editor Joel Cox. Men’s costume supervisor Glenn Wright. Women’s costume supervisor Deborah Hopper. Music Lennie Niehaus. Production design Judy Cammer. Art director Ed Verreaux. Set designers John Berger and Dawn Snyder. Set decorator Dan May. Sound Don Johnson. Running time: 2 hours, 1 minute.

MPAA-rated: R (graphic violence and strong language).