Movie Review: Dirty Harry (1971)

You've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya punk?

Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) does not much care for due process or legal niceties; he generally just wants to blow the bad guys away with his .44 Magnum gun.  He asks questions only if they survive the shootout and are lying in a puddle of blood.

Dirty Harry keeps the Man With No Name in the wild west, in this case San Francisco, but fast forwards to the modern era. Cars replace horses, highrises replace saloons, but the general rules remain generally the same: the difference between the bad guys and the good guys is a matter of perception.

The main bad guy here is an unhinged murderer calling himself Scorpio (Andy Robinson), killing innocent victims with a sniper rifle and taunting the Mayor of San Francisco (John Vernon) that the killings will continue unless a ransom is paid. Callahan is assigned to the case, but the politicians and his police superiors do not approve of his straightforward methods, and Callahan grows increasingly frustrated by what he perceives to be the weak-kneed reaction of the Mayor. When Scorpio is finally apprehended, he is let loose because Callahan failed to secure a search warrant. The killings therefore resume, and a disgusted Callahan has to disobey orders to bring the matter to an end.

In bringing Eastwood's western movie persona to an urban setting, Dirty Harry re-wrote the rules for police action films. The anti-establishment, unconventional loner cop, frustrated by rules and process and prone to extreme violence, became the new standard for movie cops.

Director Don Siegel and Eastwood provide Harry with an overwhelming cool factor. Standing straight and without cover as he trades blasts of gunfire with the bad guys, Harry needs to look down at his leg to realize that he has been hit by a shotgun. His walk, his talk, his hair and his cheap shades create an instant movie hero.

Robinson is a genuinely disturbing Scorpio. Although the movie may have benefited from providing him a more in-depth back-story, Scorpio enters the annals of great screen bad-guys when he starts emotionally abusing school kids on a hijacked bus by demanding, with increasing agitation, that they sing "ROW ROW ROW YOUR BOAT!". 

Dirty Harry is a hard-hitting, uncompromising, and ultimately nihilistic view of decaying streets where old-fashioned values are lost and morality is just another shade of grey. And its most memorable line of dialogue is, of course, delivered through the gritted teeth of resigned anger.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.