Dirty Harry

One of Hollywood's best-remembered crime sagas, Dirty Harry (1971) is a high point in director Don Siegel's career. It rescued Clint Eastwood from his post-Sergio Leone rut and gave him an even more badass and iconic character than The Man With No Name. Attacked as a "fascist" film for its apparent endorsement of police brutality, it's best viewed as a straightforward, action-packed thriller rather than a serious statement on law and order.

A psychopath named the Scorpio Killer (Andy Robinson) is terrorizing San Francisco, murdering citizens seemingly at random. Detective Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) is on the case, but his rough, two-fisted methods of crime-fighting are hamstrung by his bureaucratic superiors. As Scorpio's body count rises, the authorities seem willing to give into the killer's demand, and Harry decides to wage a one-man war against Scorpio before it's too late.

Dirty Harry embodies the conservative "backlash" to the late '60s wave of civil rights activism, anti-war protests, hippie hedonism and sensationalist crimes (Charles Manson, the Zodiac Killer). Don Siegel and his writers - including Harry Julian Fink (Major Dundee) and (surprise!) an uncredited John Milius - stack their deck as badly as the most obnoxious liberal "message" film: opening with a list of slain San Francisco cops throws a gauntlet at the Warren Court and do-gooder liberals. Scorpio is a giggling, long-haired psychopath, a hippie Zodiac whom even Stanley Kramer would want exterminated. He further "ingratiates" himself with the audience by mumbling about his right to an attorney, hijacking a bus full of kids, and paying a man to beat him up to frame Callahan. Why would you abolish the death penalty with this guy on the loose?

Even worse are Harry's mush-brained superiors, John Lindsay clones more concerned with criminal's rights than crime. Besides the constipated Mayor (John Vernon) and Harry's hand-wringing superiors, there's also a Judge (William Paterson) who's also a Professor at Berkeley! These intellectual buffoons improbably let Scorpio go because of Harry's rough treatment of him, and the warrantless search of his dwelling. I'm no Constitutional expert but in these circumstances, wouldn't the latter constitute probable cause? Not that it matters all: Harry goes beyond a reasonable attack on judicial activism to chewing out the 4th Amendment: "I'm all torn up over the suspect's rights!" In a perverse echo of High Noon, Harry disgustedly quits the force at film's end, the law not being good enough for his super-Constitutional vigilantism.

The message is morally dubious, but Dirty Harry works perfectly as a straight crime thriller. Siegel provides a crisp pace, a tense, gritty atmosphere, a snappy script and fast-paced, brutal action to keep things moving along. The shootouts are tense and well-staged, and key scenes are wonderfully suspenseful and cathartic. Some well-directed if not flashy sequences help too, including an effective zoom-out from the stadium and a few well-placed (but subtle) tracking shots, including a nice one after Harry visits his bed-ridden partner. Lalo Schriffin's scatty score is one of his best. It's hard to complain about message when everything is so damned entertaining.

Clint Eastwood gets his greatest, most iconic role with Harry Callahan. He had played a similar character in 1968's Coogan's Bluff but really comes into his own here. His early scene shooting down a trio of bank robbers while munching a hot dog is a career-defining moment, culminating in the famous "Do I feel lucky?" bit. With his swagger, irreverence and sarcasm, Eastwood steals the mantle of Conservative Movie Star from John Wayne, and continues as the standard bearer for American machismo up through Gran Torino.

The supporting cast has less to do. Andy Robinson invests Scorpio with a wonderfully perverse, nasty flavor, making him among cinema's most hateable villains. John Vernon (Topaz) and John Larch (How the West Was Won) are one-dimensional liberal stereotypes. Reni Santoni has a good part as Harry's green partner. Albert Popwell makes the first of four appearances in the series, here playing the gentleman to whom Harry's famous query is directed.

Dirty Harry is very much a product of its time, but remains a hard-nosed, satisfying entertainment. Yeah, it is obnoxious and dubious in its "message," but who cares? Frankly, I'd rather watch this bellicose expression of right-wing values than the liberal equivalent: The Chase, anyone?