The 1970's were the decade for American cop movies, not to mention the TV police detective shows that seemed to be being churned out with such regularity throughout the decade.
It clearly was a genre defining period in big screen and small screen entertainment. So much so that by the end of the 1970's vertically every veteran actor or upcoming newbie had all rolled their dice in the game at least once, some with more success than others.
The film that really started the ball rolling though was 'Dirty Harry' made right at the beginning of the decade in 1971.
Cop/detective films were nothing new of course, they had been making them way back in the 30's and the film noir vogue of the late 1940's gave us the model for the hard boiled 'Private eye' or dishevelled police Lieutenant.
However, although back in the day these films were considered 'gritty' they were still heavily sanitised by the Hays office. It wasn't until movie censorship was well and truly consigned to history that true realism could be brought in and the lines between good and evil could be blurred into total ambiguity.
We are fortunate therefore that by the late 1960's actors like Clint Eastwood and Director Don Siegel were free to not only bring such stories and portrayals to the screen but do so better than anybody else could.
Eastwood and Siegel started their collaborations a few years before in 1968 with the film Coogans Bluff, a film where the good cop was literally a modern day cowboy who was a tough and merciless as the bad guys themselves.
The character of Coogan must have stayed within the psyche of both Eastwood and Siegel however as the character of 'Dirty' Harry Callaghan bears more than just a passing resemblance and they found the perfect vehicle in which to resurrect him.
By 1971 the social situation in America had digressed to the point where victims rights were being overlooked because, murderers, rapists, drug dealers and kidnappers who were also human beings also had rights that were considered just as important.
Many high profile cases had seen criminals acquitted to reoffend, all because their 'rights' were violated through some bureaucratic technicality and people were quite rightly getting angrier.
Dirty Harry sets out to redress the balance. As in Coogans Bluff, Eastwood plays a cop who is more akin to a western lawman than anything suited to contemporary San Francisco.
He wants results and cares more about getting the job done rather than how it is achieved. You step out of line around Harry you're just going to end up dead punk!
The plot involves a psychotic serial killer, blackmailing the city, and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. The city want to cooperate with his demands to stop more people getting killed, Harry wants to find the killer himself and deal with him in his own way...in order to stop more people being killed.
You see many times throughout the movie where Harry has run ins with his superiors who want to namby pamby their way around the situation whilst Harry believes the longer they dick around with this guy the more people are going to get hurt.
One poignant scene is where the killer has kidnapped a 14 year old girl and buried her alive. Time is running out to find out where she is before her oxygen runs out...Harry with anger and desperation for the girls welfare clearly etched in his face literally tortures the wounded perp until he finally gives up the information he needs to save her.
The next scene sees that his arrest, his evidence and the killers confession will all be thrown out as inadmissible due the way it was obtained and the killer is going to be set free.
"That man had rights" says the DA
"What about (the girl)? She's raped and left in a hole to die, what about her rights? Who speaks for her?" replies a frustrated Harry, hardly believing what he is hearing.
The film was a huge hit and I said at the beginning of this review it started off a decade long run of hard boiled loose canon cop movies, but it was not without us detractors.
Many called it fascist or right wing, citing that the police had no right to be Jury, Judge and executioner. Many of the original intended stars (which incidentally included Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and Charles Bronson) turned it down for this very reason.
I personally do not find it so, for however brutal Harry Callaghan seems at times, you know his actions all stem from his desire to save lives and protect innocent people from the actions of evil people. There is nothing wrong with wanting to do that.
I think if there is a moral to the story at all, it is that if you don't want to be shot and tortured by a cop don't kidnap 14 year old girls and bury them alive... under those circumstances the Dirty Harry's of this world, no matter how dirty they are, will pose no threat to you whatsoever.
Don Siegel would leave the Dirty Harry franchise after just this one outing, but Clint would go on to make 4 sequels over the next 18 years featuring Harry Callaghan. He was not only the character Eastwood would become most associated with but a character that has become one of the most iconic in movie history.
It clearly was a genre defining period in big screen and small screen entertainment. So much so that by the end of the 1970's vertically every veteran actor or upcoming newbie had all rolled their dice in the game at least once, some with more success than others.
The film that really started the ball rolling though was 'Dirty Harry' made right at the beginning of the decade in 1971.
Cop/detective films were nothing new of course, they had been making them way back in the 30's and the film noir vogue of the late 1940's gave us the model for the hard boiled 'Private eye' or dishevelled police Lieutenant.
However, although back in the day these films were considered 'gritty' they were still heavily sanitised by the Hays office. It wasn't until movie censorship was well and truly consigned to history that true realism could be brought in and the lines between good and evil could be blurred into total ambiguity.
We are fortunate therefore that by the late 1960's actors like Clint Eastwood and Director Don Siegel were free to not only bring such stories and portrayals to the screen but do so better than anybody else could.
Eastwood and Siegel started their collaborations a few years before in 1968 with the film Coogans Bluff, a film where the good cop was literally a modern day cowboy who was a tough and merciless as the bad guys themselves.
The character of Coogan must have stayed within the psyche of both Eastwood and Siegel however as the character of 'Dirty' Harry Callaghan bears more than just a passing resemblance and they found the perfect vehicle in which to resurrect him.
By 1971 the social situation in America had digressed to the point where victims rights were being overlooked because, murderers, rapists, drug dealers and kidnappers who were also human beings also had rights that were considered just as important.
Many high profile cases had seen criminals acquitted to reoffend, all because their 'rights' were violated through some bureaucratic technicality and people were quite rightly getting angrier.
Dirty Harry sets out to redress the balance. As in Coogans Bluff, Eastwood plays a cop who is more akin to a western lawman than anything suited to contemporary San Francisco.
He wants results and cares more about getting the job done rather than how it is achieved. You step out of line around Harry you're just going to end up dead punk!
The plot involves a psychotic serial killer, blackmailing the city, and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. The city want to cooperate with his demands to stop more people getting killed, Harry wants to find the killer himself and deal with him in his own way...in order to stop more people being killed.
You see many times throughout the movie where Harry has run ins with his superiors who want to namby pamby their way around the situation whilst Harry believes the longer they dick around with this guy the more people are going to get hurt.
One poignant scene is where the killer has kidnapped a 14 year old girl and buried her alive. Time is running out to find out where she is before her oxygen runs out...Harry with anger and desperation for the girls welfare clearly etched in his face literally tortures the wounded perp until he finally gives up the information he needs to save her.
The next scene sees that his arrest, his evidence and the killers confession will all be thrown out as inadmissible due the way it was obtained and the killer is going to be set free.
"That man had rights" says the DA
"What about (the girl)? She's raped and left in a hole to die, what about her rights? Who speaks for her?" replies a frustrated Harry, hardly believing what he is hearing.
The film was a huge hit and I said at the beginning of this review it started off a decade long run of hard boiled loose canon cop movies, but it was not without us detractors.
Many called it fascist or right wing, citing that the police had no right to be Jury, Judge and executioner. Many of the original intended stars (which incidentally included Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and Charles Bronson) turned it down for this very reason.
I personally do not find it so, for however brutal Harry Callaghan seems at times, you know his actions all stem from his desire to save lives and protect innocent people from the actions of evil people. There is nothing wrong with wanting to do that.
I think if there is a moral to the story at all, it is that if you don't want to be shot and tortured by a cop don't kidnap 14 year old girls and bury them alive... under those circumstances the Dirty Harry's of this world, no matter how dirty they are, will pose no threat to you whatsoever.
Don Siegel would leave the Dirty Harry franchise after just this one outing, but Clint would go on to make 4 sequels over the next 18 years featuring Harry Callaghan. He was not only the character Eastwood would become most associated with but a character that has become one of the most iconic in movie history.