Joe Don Baker is Buford Pusser, an ex Marine who returns to find his small, peaceful Tennessee town corrupted by an immoral cabal marketing illegal stuff like gambling, white lightning, and trailer hos. He is elected sheriff and cleans it all up.Baker is mulling over the decision to run for County Sheriff. It's a dangerous job in this milieu. He's already seen a friend killed and has himself been horribly tortured. His wife, Elizabeth Hartmann, objects. "Is your pride worth the lives of your wife and children?", she asks. Both Baker's character and the viewer take the sentence to be rhetorical. It's not.But it's the sort of challenge that every wife lays down before her man when he's about to commit himself to some heroic deed. How many times has John Wayne's cinema wives clashed with him and his career as a sheriff or a Marine because they want him safe at home, not out risking his life, wondering if he'll come home in a body bag? Phil Karlson, the director, has made a couple of powerful movies but I'm not sure that he understood the import of Hartmann's question. It may have been that he realized it, but it may also have been an accident, the kind of phrase that slips easily by someone's critical apparatus. That's what I meant when I called the movie ironic.There's another scene that demonstrates the same irony. Baker has just been ambushed, his wife murdered and half his jaw shot away. His face is encased in plaster up to his eyes. He's weak and can barely move. And we see the crowd of friends in the corridor gawk and make a path when Baker's young son solemnly enters the room, carrying the little rifle that Baker gave him for Christmas. The kid is going to kill anyone who tries to hurt his Dad. Do the film makers know what they're saying? Anyone expected a Steven Segal wisecracker or anything resembling the loutish remake with Dwayne ("The Rock") Johnson will be disappointed. This movie is ambiguous in too many respects. It's not a simple revenge movie like "The Punisher," although there is an abundance of violence and blood. After that first mauling and the subsequent humiliations, Baker is rabid with revenge. His face turns into a horrifying Gargoyle mask as he tortures the spies and law breakers.I would guess -- judging from some recent polls and comments from our own politicians -- that about one out of four Americans will see this as the simple triumph of good over evil. (The distribution will be skewed in the direction of boys in their early teens.) It won't occur to them -- though the notion is brought up once or twice by character is the movie -- that Baker is a flawed person, that his pride verges on arrogance, and his anger on enjoyment. He brags about his scars.It's hard to argue with such a black and white view of the sheriff. He only drinks an occasional beer to be friendly, doesn't smoke, doesn't cuss, doesn't approve of see-through blouses, doesn't hold with loose women even if they love him, he's all tenderness with his wife and children, and doesn't gamble. Has there ever been such purity -- outside of the Bible and Arthurian legends? Baker is surprisingly good in the role of the real-life Buford Pusser. You can tell the story is based on actual facts and personalities because where else would you find people with names like Lutie McVey or Ferrin Meaks? As for Buford Pusser, that name would be the first to go. As the heroic central figure, he'd have to have a name like Matt Steel or Bull Durham.But the acting (and the location photography) are fine across the board. Nobody is a dud. Baker himself always sound like he's reciting lines in an acting class, doing his level best, but it's okay in this kind of role. After a while you get used to it and come to believe that this is how he sound off screen. He had a similar role, except as a murderer, in "Charlie Varick," where he was easily the most complex character. Probably the best performer in this film is Rosemary Murphy as the villainous Callie Hacker, head of the Whore Division. She doesn't get a chance to exercise her chops here, but catch her in "Night Moves" if you can.It doesn't really matter how you take the movie. You can either accept it as a shallow revenge story full of blood and sentiment or as the rather deeper and murkier thing I suspect it is. It will still be gripping and emotionally moving. The climax has the law-enforcer breaking the law in search of insurance that the law will prevail. Dirty Harry with a motive. Ironic.

Unfortunately the IMDb allows only comments up to 1000 words and I was so much taken in by WALKING TALL that my comment got longer, so please go to my entry in the message board, if you want to read the whole review! :-) ... :-)) I love movies with balls and brains and this is one of 'em! :-) OK, I know this movies has its small shortcomings, because it does not belong to the category of over-financed Hollywood-junk (which is a movie-category established by the film industry (!) in the later 80ies and beginning 90ties consisting of movies costing anywhere from 50 to 200 million bucks and which look like most designer-stuff: well crafted but hollow), but to the category of a small independently financed B-picture. Don't get me wrong, this ain't a movie financed on a shoestring-budget, this is just one of those movies, where the producers did not have million's to burn. It's very decently made and 95% perfect, just here or there you think, well, they could have tried one more take or something similar. But anyway, are you going to the cinema to see a technically perfect movie and receive joy from seeing designer-tailored action-scenes, or do you go to the movies or buy a DVD to enjoy yourself with a movie full of balls and brain? If you belong to the 1st category, I suggest you save the time reading this and forget about watching this flick. But if you belong to the later category, then this is something for you, you gonna enjoy this roller-coaster-flick! Especially if - as is the case with me - 70ies B-flicks are your cup of tea. They certainly are mine! I won't dwell here on the storyline of WALKING TALL (you can find details elsewhere here), it's probably enough to point out that the title is the program and that our hero's tag-line is "walk softly and carry a big stick" (or - as the old Latins said - "suaviter in modo, fortiter in re"). Yeah, that's what he does and he uses that big stick to clean house very properly. I do not know, which part of the story is actually "fact" (based on incidents in the life of Buford Pusser) and which parts are fiction (that could be a lot, since the disclaimer reads that this picture is based on "incidents suggested by the life of BP", which sounds like something, but in fact can mean nearly everything or nothing at all), but IF just 50% of the story-line happened in some way or another, this guy must have had enormous luck and 7 lives. Already the incidents, when somebody tries to kill him, amount to at least 5! The movie is quite brutal, at least for a flick made in the middle of the 70ies. Quite a lot of dead and quite a high number of severely beaten-up bodies, but there ain't that much of it on-screen. Just the first beating of our hero is really tense and was probably only outdone by Mel Gibson's Christ a couple decades later. Of course it looks a bit unrealistic to see Joe Don Baker in a T-shirt so soaked with blood, because anyone loosing that much of it would certainly be dead, but then again Phil Karlson had a point to make and wanted to make sure we'd get it: our hero had been severely wounded by the villains of the town and now he had a task to handle, do what a man has to do, simply WALK TALL! This movie is pure 70ies magnetism, a wonderful ride into rural Americana, with so many classic (partly stereo-)types, wonderful original characters, hardly any cardboard ones, and actors indeed looking like someone you could meet at any corner of such a town. This is what lifts such classic productions over the Hollywood-product we get today: we do see real people doing things, that could at least be possible (while when we watch Die Hard IV everybody should know that 90% of the action-scenes there could simply never happen, because they are against the laws of physics). Here you got a lot of beat-ups, car-chases, shoot-outs, more beatings, cars driving in houses, all things that normally don't happen if the police does its job, but things that COULD happen, that are physically possible. And they are staged with zest and verve by a veteran director in the twilight of his career, who took this job at the age of 66 and wanted to give it a last (which then was his penultimate) try. And he does deliver ALL the goods, pulls all triggers. He certainly knew this could very well be his last effort, so why not give the best. With 4 decades (!!) of movie-making experience, Phil Karlson (who also directed THE SILENCERS and THE WRECKING CREW-entries in the lovely Matt Helm-series and quite a couple very good noir's and western) certainly knew how to build up a good storyline and how to stage it as well as possible with whatever budget he had available. ...ATTENTION ! This comment here is NOT COMPLETE, because the IMDb allows only 1000 words and I wrote more, so please go to my entry in the message board (if you liked to read my few cents) to get the whole review and to be able to comment on it! :-)

If you are a southern male who grew up in the 1970's, "Walking Tall" is your "Gone With The Wind". This 1973 movie is based on actual events in the life of Sheriff Buford Pusser of McNairy County, Tennessee during the 1960's. Though the screenplay takes some liberties with Pusser's story, it is an exciting account of one man taking on organized crime and corruption .The story begins with Buford and his family moving back to his home town in McNairy County. Shortly after arriving, Buford realizes that his home town has changed. Gambling, prostitution, and bootlegging have taken over. Buford exposes the gambling operation to be corrupt and is brutally beaten and left for dead. He recovers and seeks vengeance using a big piece of lumber. He is arrested for his troubles. Buford is cleared of the charges and is soon elected Sheriff. He promises to rid the county of crime and corruption. The rest of the movie shows how difficult it was for Buford to follow through with his promise.Buford Pusser is played by Joe Don Baker, who gives the performance of his career. Baker's Pusser faces the tragic events of the movie with a sense of sad but heroic nobility. The audience is able to feel what Pusser must have felt when these events actually happened through Baker's brave performance.The story is ultimately a tragic tale of one man who walked tall and stood up against the forces of corruption. It is the rare action movie that makes you cheer and cry at the same time. This is essential viewing for anyone who loves true heroes.

I recently purchased the box set of the "Walking Tall" trilogy as I had forgotten about this movie until the remake starring "The Rock" came out in 2004. I sat down and watched them all back to back. I was rather disappointed that Joe Don Baker didn't play the part of Buford Pusser in all three. I'm not taking anything from Bo Svenson but to me he just didn't look the part. If they were not going to use JDB in all of them, then they should have gotten BS to play the lead in the first. I felt that for the time line, the movie, albeit low budgeted, was pretty decent. I am from the south and my father was in law enforcement for 30 years and I can relate to the stories of "running shine" and the like. There are so many clips that were shown that I, on a personal level, could relate to. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole trilogy and yes, I did shed a few tears when Pauline died and a whole lot when Buford died. I give the whole thing a "thumbs-up" and hope that one day there can be a true remake of the whole trilogy with a wonderful supporting cast that can be in all three movies!