As disturbingly dark as Play Misty wasdeceptively light (also photographed, thirteen years later, by Bruce Surtees), Tightrope casts homicidedetective Eastwood into a Dante-esque purgatory-New Orleans by night-wrestling with his sexual demonswhile on the trail of a sex killer who is apparently on the trail of him. As if in a dream, Eastwood'sDetective Block finds himself in his element among French Quarter prostitutes, with whom he experimentssexually while dogging his Dganger. Each night, Block returns to his two adoring daughters; as hisshadow passes over their beds, this "film about women-about desiring them (and controlling that desire),about telling yourself you're protecting them (or even yourself from them)" (Village Voice) distressinglycomes home to roost. Eastwood gives a nod to his feminist critics in the level-headed character, director ofa rape-crisis center, played by Genevieve Bujold. The film may still break down women into twotypes-good and bad-but it surprisingly and daringly implicates the Eastwood hero in his own messymachismo; when Block looks in the mirror, what he sees is the good, the bad and the ugly.