I suspect that, like many others in the newspaper game, I owe a great debt of gratitude to Clint Eastwood. There are some who choose only to interpret Eastwood’s early work through the stultifying prism of the western genre, albeit with iconoclastic soundtracks. But those among us who are more sensitive and attuned to the big man’s subtle oeuvre detected early on that these were so much more besides, with enough tropes and memes to justify any column by a film critic. These weren’t just cowboy films; they were brooding political thrillers that channelled cold war angst and the simmering racial tension of a country on the edge.
I especially liked The Outlaw Josey Wales where Clint boots the absolute bejesus out of an entire battalion of unionists who have murdered his family and friends. Yet, as he hunts down these wretched brigands he sets out on a long journey towards love and forgiveness. Along the way he also explores the salvific balm of diversity and women’s empowerment in the company of a ragtag assortment of Native Americans and a grandmother and granddaughter combo from Kansas. Some have even said that this is an homage to Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. So you can see why Josey Wales might light up the radical fires in a young man’s soul and make him want to change the world.
Years later, Bruce Willis revives Clint’s Josey Wales character and also that of the Man With No Name in the spaghetti westerns. In his first Die Hard trilogy Willis plays detective John McClane, a sensitive tough guy who challenges society’s perceptions and narrow expectations of the traditional role of the male in modern civilisation. Thus he wears a sweaty vest all the time and does most of his good work at night in moodily-lit industrial premises where he reflects on the choices life can throw at a chiel.
Through the rubble of his fight for survival, McClane confronts his demons and his drinking and realises that in a marriage you have to give and take a bit. And at the end he becomes the best friend of a heroic black policeman, thus confronting America’s racial challenges into the bargain. Willis subtly imbues the McClane character with an ineffable sense of renewed social vigour, having first placed him in a state of helpless isolation, trapped in a vortex of outmoded masculine ideas. It paves the way for Eddie Redmayne’s sensitive and beautiful portrayal of Professor Stephen Hawking a whole generation later. Bravo mon maestro and chapeau too, à propos.
I’ve often thought of Clint and Bruce while surveying Scotland’s recent turbid political landscape. This country has become the world’s political theme park, having had four Holyrood elections, three Westminster ones and a two-year independence referendum in the space of 16 years.
Waterstones is groaning under the weight of books and treatises about What Just Happened in Scotland, and so now I think it’s time for a political thriller set against the backdrop of these turbulent last two years when a nation fought for its independence. I envisage that only a trilogy could do justice to the sprawling emotional and cultural rollercoaster that was the independence referendum. So here are a few suggestions for Irvine Welsh or Tony Roper to get their teeth into:
Tinker Tailor Soldier Bam
In this edgy tale of political intrigue and betrayal James McAvoy plays John Inverness, a washed-up special adviser at the heart of the Scottish government. He was brilliant once but he sacrificed his marriage on the altar of the single currency and now finds himself writing speeches for Alex Neil. But one night, as he works on a keynote script addressing obesity in domestic pets, our hero overhears a conversation in the next room that will change his life for ever. A senior civil servant is leaking details of the white paper to a shadowy Better Together figure known only by his codename of Cockers.
What follows carries Inverness to the edge of reason, not to mention welfare reform as the running dogs of the British state in all their fury are unleashed upon him. In a high-stakes game of snakes and ladders, Inverness is forced to confront all his emotional demons as Cockers is unmasked and a fight to the death ensues with the fell forces of MI5, MI6 and Alistair Darling’s sinister bodyguards, the MBC aka the Morningside Book Club.
Salvador
In this, the sequel to Tinker Tailor Soldier Bam, we encounter Inverness once more. Despite having survived his terrifying ordeal at the hands of the MBC and exposing their vile stratagems to undermine Scotia, Inverness’s redemption is shortlived. The referendum has been lost and he is on the bevvy again, having opted to take what he thought would be a lucrative job in Scotland’s oil and gas sector.
But he is soon sucked into the murky chaos of Scotland’s ongoing constitutional arrangements when a mysterious voice from his Glaswegian past messages him on Twitter. He uses the codename “Salvador”, an homage to Oliver Stone’s 1986 cinematic masterpiece but also the obscure Glaswegian rhyming slang for an alcoholic beverage favoured by his friend.
The two are then engaged in a heartstopping ordeal by fire as they fight to reveal the dark, satanic secret at the heart of “The Vow”.
The Glaswegian Candidate
This is the edgy prequel to Tinker Tailor, where we see the young and idealistic John Inverness taking his first steps as a Labour researcher, his path in life seemingly lit up by the dawn of free university tuition and an end to Buckfast. But his faith in the party of the people is shattered when Jock Thompson, a charismatic Labour leader, emerges, all Glaswegian gallusness and “by the way, by the way”. Soon, a mis-directed email from Whitehall, the cold heart of the British establishment, exposes this sham for what it is: an evil conspiracy to destroy the party of the people.
Inverness abandons the party of his forefathers and embarks on a pain-filled odyssey with the SNP, during which he will be asked to sacrifice all that he loves for Bonnie Scotland.
Kevin McKenna was shortlisted last week for the Scottish Press Awards
