Make my day punk!

If you think that you can get away with blasphemy, with throwing filth at the image of the Son of God, of taking His name in vain, in abusing statues of His Blessed Mother, in propagating lies about pagan festivals being the prototypes of Christian ones (The Little Way), in destroying the life in the womb that He created, in assaulting His priests, His chosen ones, in taking the lives of the aged and the infirm, of experimenting on embryos in order to undertake the great 'good' of finding a cure for this, that and the other, if you think, for one minute you can get away with promoting mortal sin through the defence of homosexuality, licentiousness and immorality -

Think again!....Make my day!

"I have ten shots and you don't know how many I've used....so take a chance, make my day.....I'm taking a bead on you......"

The Enforcer

The third entry in the Dirty Harry series, The Enforcer (1976), is an entertaining mixed bag. Not as well-crafted as its predecessors, it remains on an even keel through solid action scenes and a strong performance by Tyne Daly.

San Francisco is terrorized by a gang of "revolutionaries" called the People's Revolutionary Strike Force, a Symbionese Liberation Army clone whose real motive is to get rich quick. Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) is on and off the case, but his PR-conscious superiors team him with shavetail cop Kate Moore (Tyne Daly). Harry initially dislikes Kate, but ultimately finds her a skilled and resourceful officer. The stakes are raised considerably when the Mayor (John Crawford) is kidnaped by the PRSF, and Harry and Kate track them down to Alcatraz Island for an explosive tete-a-tete.

The Dirty Harry films were fairly schematic, and the more the trick was repeated the less interesting it got. The Enforcer lacks a strong plot and interesting villains, but it makes up for it with solid action scenes. Director James Fargo provides a number of great set-pieces, including an excellent foot chase and an epic shootout on Alcatraz Island. The movie also helps by focusing on the Harry-Kate relationship, showing that Harry's initial resentment of Kate isn't for her gender so much as her inexperience. Their relationship generates some good gags (especially the bazooka test-firing sequence) and genuine, not-quite-romantic chemistry.

Clint Eastwood is dependably disgruntled, dispensing black humor, quips and .44 bullets with his usual aplomb. Tyne Daly is exceptional; some early scenes play her dilemma for laughs, but she's tough, resourceful, feminine and every bit Harry's equal. Series regulars John Mitchum, Bradford Dillman and Albert Popwell acquit themselves well, but the bad guys are lame and forgettable punks.

The Enforcer isn't as good as the first two Dirty Harry flicks, but it's still pretty solid shoot-'em-up entertainment. It's certainly miles better than the last two entries in the series.

Dirty Harry's Dregs

Yes, Clint Eastwood afficianados and fans of police brutality, Harry Callahan is back, older and feistier than ever, for two more adventures! Today we'll be doing a double-barreled review of the final two Dirty Harry flicks, Sudden Impact and The Dead Pool. Neither will be winning any Oscars, but one's fun and the other is terrible. Which is which may surprise you.

Sudden Impact (1983, Clint Eastwood)



Sudden Impact is the absolute nadir of the Dirty Harry series. Even with Clint himself at the helm, Harry's four go-around is really something awful, a nasty, dull and tiresome flick with little to commend it but grisly violence and a few one-liners.

In this go-around, Harry is put on forced vacation after he literally scares a Mob boss (Michael V. Gazzo) to death. Harry is dragooned into helping the small town of San Paolo investigate a serial killer, and immediately butts heads with the local authorities. He also falls for local artist Jennifer Spencer (Sondra Locke), who is quite obviously the serial killer and why bother to pretend it's a mystery?

Sudden Impact is a boring and tired film, no doubt reflecting Clint's own growing disinterest in the series. The script slavishly follows the series conventions, with Harry busting up a robbery, dispensing pithy quotes, losing an expendable partner (Albert Popwell, having renounced his criminal ways) and sparring with testy superiors. The plot is thoroughly predictable, with Clint borrowing Sergio Leone-style flashbacks and the mirror-shooting bit from Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. And don't get me started on the godawful ending, which wouldn't have passed muster on Walker, Texas Ranger.

Clint's direction is lazy, with boring camera work and by-the-numbers action: his heart clearly isn't in the film. The only creative action scene is an amusing bit where Harry pursues a criminal by driving a bus full of bloodthirsty seniors. He also amps up the violence and sadism: the rape flashbacks are shown at length, our killer gets her jollies shooting people in the balls, and Clint repeatedly punches out a nasty lesbian (Audrey J. Nienan) for laughs. Lovely.

Clint is in fine form in front of the camera, as always: His "Go ahead, make my day!" remains one of the all-time great movie lines. Unfortunately, he surrounds himself with a gaggle of horrible supporting actors, who take up way too much screen time with haphazard ham. All of them are just plain bad, with a special shout-out to Sondra Locke, Clint's partner of the time. The girl is unattractive and thoroughly untalented, and is a blight on every film Clint shoe-horned her into. So it is here, 'twas ever us.

The Dead Pool (1988, Buddy Van Horn)



Harry's final outing is miles better. The Dead Pool is no less derivative of its predecessors than Sudden Impact, but it's far more palatable due to a welcome injection of self-parody. Hey, when you're fifty-eight and still playing a two-fisted action hero, you'd better be able to poke fun at yourself.

This time, Harry finds himself placed in a "dead pool" list of celebrities betted on by a group of ghoulish gamblers. Harry doesn't take kindly to this, and his investigation initially leads him to arrogant film director Peter Swan (Liam Neeson), whose star (Jim Carrey) died in mysterious circumstances - and whose list matches the pattern of killings. Harry must avoid this new killer along with the thugs of another Mob boss (Anthony Charnota) while romancing pretty reporter Samantha (Patricia Clarkson).

The Dead Pool avoids being another tired rehash through Steve Sharon's witty script, which plays most of its material for laughs. The film is effectively a ninety-minute pisstake, with Harry going through the motions with a clever wink and nod. In one of the funniest action scenes ever, Harry and his partner are chased around San Francisco by a remote control car! Whether that's awesome or awful, I leave for you to decide. Other scenes have Harry intimidating an incarcertated gangster with a well-muscled inmate (Diego Chairs), and brandishing a harpoon (!) at film's climax. The puerile and hypocritical attacks on media violence are easy to ignore in the overall spirit of fun.

Clint's getting up there in years but he's as feisty as ever. As Clint would continue to play variants of Harry for years to come (The Rookie, In the Line of Fire, Gran Torino), it's nice to see him practice self-deprecation. He's backed by a good supporting cast, for once: Evan C. Kim is easily Harry's most likeable partner, Patricia Clarkson (The Untouchables) makes a charming love interest and Jim Carrey shines in a pre-stardom bit part. Liam Neeson (Batman Begins) plays a boring jerk director and David Hunt's (TV's Everybody Loves Raymond, oddly enough) psycho is equally one-note.

Magnum Force

The original Dirty Harry (1971) is a straightforward right-wing fantasy: super-cop Harry Callahan gives the criminal-coddling Liberal Establishment the finger while tracking down a ruthless serial killer. Its first sequel, Magnum Force (1973), provides a bizarre, garbled counter-point. In this film, the tables are turned, with vigilante cops the bad guys and Harry upholding "the System." Huh? It's well that the film is so entertaining, or the viewer would find it laughably hypocritical.

San Francisco is shaken by a series of murders: crooked union bosses, organized crime figures and minor thugs are murdered by men in police uniform. Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) is soon on the case. His testy boss, Lt. Briggs (Hal Holbrook), suspects a crime boss (Tony Gorgio), but Callahan finds the evidence points towards disgruntled cop Charlie McCoy (Mitch Ryan). However, McCoy is killed during one of the killers' raids, and Callahn takes aim at a quartet of sharpshooting rookie cops who think themselves above the law.

Dirty Harry played perfectly into the conservative backlash against '60s political activism, crime and chaos. Magnum Force apparently rebukes its predecessor: the villainous vigilante cops are portrayed as Gestapo-type murderers that take law and order to an extreme, summarily executing everyone from abusive pimps to mob bosses. That's all well and good, but aren't we rooting for Harry to do the same? Isn't that the whole point of why he's awesome? Apparently not: Harry mouths some wholly unconvincing platitudes about "the System" working, shocking sentiments from writers John Milius ("Why spoil the beauty of the thing with legality?") and Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter). Of course, Harry utlimately reverts to wasting bad guys without due process, and we wonder what the hell we're supposed to take away from this mess. I guess the message is, vigilantism is only okay when Harry does it. Fair enough, I don't feel like arguing.

Fortunately, Magnum Force works fine as pure entertainment. The plot jerks around a bit but it maintains a smooth, crisp pace through its 125-minutes. Director Ted Post (Hang 'Em High) takes what worked in the original and kicks it up a few notches. The violence isn't as grisly as the original but Post compensates with lots of action, including a lengthy shootout with the Mob and a gripping, brilliantly-structured climactic set-piece. Writers Milius and Cimino, as expected, provide some meaty dialogue: "Shooting... that's how people get shot!" being my favorite one-liner. Lalo Schiffrin's score is even better than his work on the original Dirty Harry. Everything the casual viewer liked about the first film is back in abundance and things like message don't really matter.

Clint Eastwood reprises his signature role with little difficulty. If anything, Harry's an even bigger badass than before, breaking up an airplane hijacking *and* convenience-store hold-up, fending off women with a stick and even doing some real detective work. Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild) makes a perfect slimy villain, with David Soul (TV's Starsky and Hutch), Kip Niven, Robert Urich and Tim Matheson (Animal House) as his ruthless henchmen. Felton Perry (Walking Tall) takes a turn as Harry's latest ill-fated partner and Mitch Ryan (High Plains Drifter) provides some pathos. Series regular Albert Popwell inevitably turns up, here playing a nasty pimp.

Magnum Force is lots of fun, and the only thing that separates it from the first Dirty Harry is coherence. It's easy to overlook the film's schizophrenic, self-devouring "morality" for sake of its great action scenes and cool Clint Eastwood. And really, what's coherence next to that?

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?