User Reviews

The late sixties and seventies saw the growth of the "tough cop" thriller. In earlier crime thrillers ("White Heat", from the late forties, is a good example) the police had generally been portrayed as honourable and incorruptible men who did everything by the book. The new breed of heroes were different. They were not only tough but also morally ambiguous, capable of bending and even breaking the rules when they thought it was necessary.

Before making "Dirty Harry", Clint Eastwood had acted in another film of this type, "Coogan's Bluff". Both films had the same director, Don Siegel. "Coogan's Bluff, however, is a lightweight film, with a rather annoying hero who likes to cut corners because he cannot be bothered to go through the proper channels. My sympathies are with Lee J. Cobb's old-school New York cop, irritated beyond measure by Coogan's impatience and cowboy brashness.

In "Dirty Harry" much more important matters are at stake. A serial killer calling himself "Scorpio" is terrorising San Francisco by carrying out killings at random. Some of his victims seem to have been chosen on the basis of religious or racial bigotry, but Scorpio's main motive is blackmail; he will stop killing if the city authorities pay him $100,000. When this blackmail fails, Scorpio kidnaps a young girl, buries her underground with a limited supply of oxygen and announces that he will let her die if his demands are not met. Reluctantly, the authorities agree to hand over the money.

The police officer on the case is Inspector Harry Callahan, nicknamed "Dirty Harry", partly because of his uncompromising methods and partly because he gets the jobs other officers don't want. Disgusted by the willingness of the authorities to meet Scorpio's demands, Harry tracks down the main suspect, arrests him after shooting him in the leg, finds the murder weapon and forces him to reveal the girl's whereabouts (unfortunately too late to save her life). Although there can be no doubt of the man's guilt, the city's Mayor and District Attorney order his release because the evidence against him is inadmissible; Harry had no warrant to search his premises and the confession obtained by strong-arm methods would not be admissible in Court. Scorpio's narrow escape does not, however, persuade him that crime does not pay, and soon afterwards he kidnaps and holds hostage a busload of schoolchildren. Only Harry can save them……

In some ways Harry is an unsympathetic character. He is cool to the point of coldness and always has an air of menace about him, particularly during the famous "Do you feel lucky?" speech. Some of his dialogue suggests that he is racially prejudiced himself. Clint Eastwood made the role so much his own that it is strange to think he was only fourth choice after Frank Sinatra, John Wayne and Paul Newman. It is doubtful whether any of those actors could have played the part so well. Sinatra might have made him too unsympathetic. Newman could have conveyed his coolness but might not have had the same underlying menace. Wayne (as he was to prove in "Brannigan" a few years later) was definitely too old for a role of this type.

This film has always been controversial, with critics divided along ideological lines. (The film-makers seem to have intended a deliberate juxtaposition of Harry's values with those of the city of San Francisco which, during the hippie era, was becoming known as America's most liberal city). Liberals such as Roger Ebert have loathed Harry, seeing him as a man who thinks himself above the law, even a fascist. They note that his treatment of Scorpio violates (as the DA points out) at least three, and possibly four, constitutional amendments. (Such liberal critics are divided as to whether the film condemns or condones Harry's methods). Conservatives, however, see him as a hero, a man who will defend the public from crime while his superiors seem more concerned to defend the criminals. They point out that the seventies liberals who were so quick to condemn Harry for acting in breach of the constitution did not apply the same literal-minded legalism to, say, those who were resisting the (constitutionally permissible) Vietnam draft or to civil rights protesters who were engaged in civil disobedience against (constitutionally tolerated) racism in the Southern states.

"Dirty Harry" is much more than a cop thriller; it is a film that asks some important questions. It may seem odd to compare a tough cop with draft resisters or with civil rights campaigners, but Harry faces a moral choice similar to that confronting those two groups of people. In each case the central question is "If there is a conflict between the two, should one obey the law of the land or should one obey one's own conscience". This is a question to which there is often no easy answer and is particularly acute for Harry because, as a police officer, he is duty-bound to uphold the law. The law states that he should not carry out a search without a warrant and that he should not use force to obtain a confession from Scorpio. His conscience tells him that he must do both these things to save an innocent life.

The German dramatist Friedrich Hebbel once remarked that tragedy does not arise out of the conflict of right and wrong. It arises out of the conflict of two rights. This is the situation which we see in this film, which means that both the liberal and conservative viewpoints quoted above are right- and both are wrong. The law is right to impose limits on police powers, in order to protect the citizen from abuse of those powers by corrupt or over-zealous officers. And Harry is right to go beyond those limits in an effort to save a life. 8/10

FYI--If possible, try to get the DVD for this one. I watched it streaming on Netflix and it was a very dark and muddy copy--and left a lot to be desired.

Harry (Clint Eastwood) is a tough cop. He's good at his job but often gets on the wrong side of his superiors due to his propensity to leave a long trail of bodies in dispensing justice. And, throughout the film, he delivers--one amazing act of insane bravery after another. In this first installment, he's after a psycho serial killer who calls himself 'Scorpio'. Scorpio has begun killing random folks and is extorting money out of the city to make him stop. Considering that there are four sequels to this film, you can pretty safely assume that in the end, Harry will come out on top.

"Dirty Harry" is a cop film from a new generation of gritty anti-hero cop films. While it's not among the first (the late 60s saw such films as "Madigan" and "The Detective"), it was certainly dirty in every sense. The film is raw--bloody, violent, peppered with spicy language and racial epithets as well as nudity. This is NOT a movie to show the kids and your mother! When the film was shown on TV for the first time, significant chunks were cut. Even compared to films today, this is a pretty rough film. On the other hand, you've gotta admit that it's great entertainment. The script is solid, the film (oddly) has an unusual sense of humor and the acting is excellent all around.

By the way, although I really enjoyed this film, the best San Francisco cop film still, in my opinion, is "Bullitt". Seeing both as a double-feature would be fantastic. Also, in "Dirty Harry", I don't think the film needed the portion where Scorpio pays someone to beat him up--it didn't really add much to the film and wasn't really integrated well into the movie.

The film might easily have passed for a popular tale of cops and robbers or, more particularly, cop and psychopath had it not been for the ruthlessness of Harry's methods...

In this character, Eastwood is the archetypal cop of the 1970s... He is unsociable, insensitive, silent without apparent reason, incapable equally of thought or of any human feeling, solving all problems with a blast from a revolver so heavy that it takes two hands to aim it... In fact, the reason why Clint Eastwood behaves so ruthlessly in "Dirty Harry" is carefully plotted at one point in the film: his wife was killed by a hit-and-run driver escaping from the scene of a crime, so he hates all baddies…

'Dirty Harry' supplanted suspense by action, tension by brutality, character by a bigger and better bullet...

Eastwood is a plain-clothes policeman who puts his faith in his Colt Magnum.44 and his ability to use it... He is ready to shoot down a criminal as arrest him... Eastwood brought the rude justice of the lawless West to the regular laws of the modern city... Perhaps his behavior would have been less controversial if he had merely been a renegade cop who broke the rules when roused by anger, but in the cool neon light of his superior's office, he is evidently unrepentant about his behavior...

Eastwood had played 'Dirty Harry' five times in the sequels 'Magnum Force', 'The Enforcer', 'Sudden Impact' and 'The Dead Pool.' Callahan is always in a situation where he has to be his own judge and jury... Harry always gets somebody who's very lethal... In the case of "Dirty Harry", it was a psychopathic killer... Callahan wants to get him off the streets so that nobody else becomes a victim... He is a man on the side of the public... He feels that the law is wrong and he should fight that or try to solve it... Harry is not a man who stands for violence... He is a man who can't understand society tolerating violence...

Eastwood is reassuringly indestructible and in real situations he adopts the fantasy mastery of a traditional Western loner... He may be beaten up, but never beaten by the criminals or by authority...

And so here it is: one of the most influential police films of all time, and a film that, along with THE FRENCH CONNECTION, helped to revolutionise the cop movie ever afterwards. This distinctive, gritty thriller was made at the cusp of the '70s, when everything was getting darker and more violent, and this is no exception. In essence, it sees Clint Eastwood tackling a sadistic psychopath who spends half his time as a sniper and the other half abducting and raping children. Yes, it's unpleasant subject matter all right, but with sure hand director Don Siegel at the helm and Eastwood in one of his most iconic roles in front of the camera, it's never less than entertaining.

Really, this film belongs to Eastwood. It's his most famous role and he plays it laconic like nobody else can. He's an outsider, an old-fashioned guy in a modern world, and he seems just to have stepped out of the wild west into a time and place he doesn't belong. Full of witty put-downs and smart dialogue, Eastwood owns this movie and it feels lacking whenever he isn't around, which is fine because he's on screen for 95% of the time.

Opposing Eastwood is Andrew Robinson in a breakthrough performance as one of cinema's most chilling psychopaths – he certainly gives Anthony Perkins a run for his money! Robinson is scarily brilliant as the anything-goes killer who keeps evading justice until the thrilling climax in which he and Eastwood finally face off. Along the way, they have plenty of run-ins, utilising great choreography. There's a show-off in an deserted football stadium which screams 'epic' and a wonderful action sequence with Eastwood atop a hijacked bus at the climax which works precisely because the star isn't afraid to do all his own stunts. Add in the famous bank robbery sequence – ending with Eastwood's "lucky" speech – and a supporting cast of tough guy actors fitting their roles like a glove and you have one very famous, enjoyable classic.

Maverick San Francisco police detective Harry Callahan (superbly played with magnetic self-assurance by Clint Eastwood) infuriates his uptight superiors by bending the rules in order to nab vicious crazed sniper Scorpio (a genuinely creepy and chilling portrayal by Andy Robinson). Director Don Siegel, working from a tough and hard-hitting script by Harry Julian Fink and R.M. Fink, relates the gripping story with exceptionally tight and precise narrative economy, builds a considerable amount of gut-wrenching tension (the climax with Scorpio abducting a bus full of kids is especially strong and nerve-wracking), and stages the rousing action set pieces with tremendous expertise. Siegel deserves additional props for the movie's unflinchingly gritty tone: The realistic brutal violence is truly harsh and unpleasant while Scorpio's victims include a little black boy and a fourteen-year-old girl.

Of course, it's Eastwood's star-making turn as supremely cool and poised anti-hero supreme Harry that makes this film a remarkably fierce and explosive classic of the crime police genre: sardonic, laid-back, resolute in his firm sense of hardboiled justice, constantly needled and ridiculed by his disapproving by-the-book fellow law enforcers, disillusioned with bureaucratic red tape, and rendered rootless and stoical by the tragic death of his wife, Harry sure is a fascinatingly rugged and formidable iconoclastic enforcer of the law who may not follow correct procedure, but certainly gets the job done just the same in his own decidedly unorthodox way. Moreover, this film makes a powerful and provocative central statement about how the conventional law and order system quite simply doesn't work because it leans too much in favor of criminals (Scorpio gets off on a technicality after Harry busts him). This picture warrants extra praise for its strong feeling of urban blight, with Bruce Surtees' stark cinematography vividly depicting an eerie, corrupt uninviting nocturnal 'Frisco that's rife with decay and danger. Lalo Schifrin's funky'n'jazzy score hits the groovy spot. While Eastwood definitely holds the whole movie together by the strength of his substantial charisma alone, he nonetheless receives excellent support from Reni Santoni as Harry's eager rookie partner Chico Gonzalez, Harry Guardino as the gruff Lt. Al Bressler, John Mitchum as the jolly Frank DiGiorgio, John Larch as the stern police chief, and John Vernon as the wimpy mayor. Essential viewing.