So sad that Dirty Harry went out with such a weak bang...
Love Clint Eastwood, love Harry Callahan, but this final installment just doesn't come close to meeting the standards of the earlier movies. They all have their weak spots but but this one brings new meaning to the word "weak". A few examples:
1. We know Harry can take on all kinds of bad guys with the six bullets in his Magnum, but, cmon, 2 thugs armed with machine guns? How does lying down at the bottom of a glass-walled exterior elevator protect you from machine gun bullets, by the way?
2. Can someone really drive a vehicle in a high-speed chase thru SF and yet still be able to handle the controls of a remote-control toy car? Back in 1988 did they really have RC cars that could go 60 mph while loaded with an explosive device? What kind of battery powered that thing... plutonium?
3. Would the Mafia chief in the prison really fall for Harry's scam... to the point of hiring bodyguards for Harry? Really??
4. Weakest partner ever for Harry... Kim has done some good work in film and TV but he has very little to do here beyond the one obligatory martial arts fight scene. His becoming yet another wounded partner is becoming old,especially where this time we haven't even had a chance to get to know the guy.
5. Harry's bosses griping and complaining about Harry... again, becoming very old and tired. Especially when the actors have no personality to speak of. Bring back Leslie Nielson!
6. Liam Neeson's character... pure stereotype. Very uninteresting. The villain is a total nullity. Really bad writing here. He's not scary, not interesting and not very believable. Compare him to Andrew Robinson in the first DH movie. Wow... talk about contrasts!
7. The sub-theme about the media exploiting the pain of ordinary people to increase ratings and circulation... gee, I doubt this was ground-breaking even back in 1988. The fact that Clarkson is converted to Harry's point of view after getting machine-gunned... well, at least she catches on quick!
8. The final confrontation where Harry harpoons the bad guy... did anyone else LAUGH when Harry comes out with the harpoon gun in his hands? It's a nice twist to have the villain holding Harry's Magnum but really?! Also anyone else notice the ethical problem here: Harry kills a man he knows to be unarmed (out of bullets) and who is offering no resistance. He never did that in the first DH... that was the whole POINT of "Do you feel lucky, Punk?" Even when he shoots Robinson in the football stadium, his INTENT isn't to kill an unarmed man, it's to coerce information about the poor kidnapped girl out of him. Sure, it's extreme but it isn't an execution. IMO this presents a major degradation in Harry's character, perhaps betraying a failure in the writer's appreciation of Callahan's ethical mind-set. If they wanted the villain dead at the end, which makes some sense, why not just have him pull another knife out of his pocket and charge Harry?
9. Filmed like a one-hour TV episode of a show like Cannon or Hawaii 5-0. Actually I've seen better episodes of ordinary TV dramas than this and I'm sure they cost a LOT less to write and to film.
Ultimately, it isn't so much that one could reasonably expect "Dirty Harry 5" to come close to the quality of the first DH. But one could expect a movie of this significance to be far superior to an ordinary TV drama. Right?
Worth watching once, if for no other reason than to appreciate how great the first DH is.
Love Clint Eastwood, love Harry Callahan, but this final installment just doesn't come close to meeting the standards of the earlier movies. They all have their weak spots but but this one brings new meaning to the word "weak". A few examples:
1. We know Harry can take on all kinds of bad guys with the six bullets in his Magnum, but, cmon, 2 thugs armed with machine guns? How does lying down at the bottom of a glass-walled exterior elevator protect you from machine gun bullets, by the way?
2. Can someone really drive a vehicle in a high-speed chase thru SF and yet still be able to handle the controls of a remote-control toy car? Back in 1988 did they really have RC cars that could go 60 mph while loaded with an explosive device? What kind of battery powered that thing... plutonium?
3. Would the Mafia chief in the prison really fall for Harry's scam... to the point of hiring bodyguards for Harry? Really??
4. Weakest partner ever for Harry... Kim has done some good work in film and TV but he has very little to do here beyond the one obligatory martial arts fight scene. His becoming yet another wounded partner is becoming old,especially where this time we haven't even had a chance to get to know the guy.
5. Harry's bosses griping and complaining about Harry... again, becoming very old and tired. Especially when the actors have no personality to speak of. Bring back Leslie Nielson!
6. Liam Neeson's character... pure stereotype. Very uninteresting. The villain is a total nullity. Really bad writing here. He's not scary, not interesting and not very believable. Compare him to Andrew Robinson in the first DH movie. Wow... talk about contrasts!
7. The sub-theme about the media exploiting the pain of ordinary people to increase ratings and circulation... gee, I doubt this was ground-breaking even back in 1988. The fact that Clarkson is converted to Harry's point of view after getting machine-gunned... well, at least she catches on quick!
8. The final confrontation where Harry harpoons the bad guy... did anyone else LAUGH when Harry comes out with the harpoon gun in his hands? It's a nice twist to have the villain holding Harry's Magnum but really?! Also anyone else notice the ethical problem here: Harry kills a man he knows to be unarmed (out of bullets) and who is offering no resistance. He never did that in the first DH... that was the whole POINT of "Do you feel lucky, Punk?" Even when he shoots Robinson in the football stadium, his INTENT isn't to kill an unarmed man, it's to coerce information about the poor kidnapped girl out of him. Sure, it's extreme but it isn't an execution. IMO this presents a major degradation in Harry's character, perhaps betraying a failure in the writer's appreciation of Callahan's ethical mind-set. If they wanted the villain dead at the end, which makes some sense, why not just have him pull another knife out of his pocket and charge Harry?
9. Filmed like a one-hour TV episode of a show like Cannon or Hawaii 5-0. Actually I've seen better episodes of ordinary TV dramas than this and I'm sure they cost a LOT less to write and to film.
Ultimately, it isn't so much that one could reasonably expect "Dirty Harry 5" to come close to the quality of the first DH. But one could expect a movie of this significance to be far superior to an ordinary TV drama. Right?
Worth watching once, if for no other reason than to appreciate how great the first DH is.