Dirty Harry Movies
I recently watched a "Dirty Harry" movie marathon and found myself
thoroughly entertained. How could I not be? A rogue cop who completely
disregards the law and mercilessly shoots and kills villains by the bushel with
"the most powerful handgun in the world, and will blow your head
clean-off." A cop who invariably succeeds where the courts fail. A cop who
is justice incarnate. A cop who always gets his man, dead or alive...usually
dead, and perforated and splattered with multiple .44 caliber bullet holes,
anti-tank rockets, and the occasional harpoon, which is exactly how we want it,
and mostly to the accompaniment of one of the great Lalo Schifrin's amazing
scores. In addition to his many other charms, Dirty Harry fights political
correctness and idiotic politicians with the same vengeance he employs against
hardened and vicious criminals, but in his battles against the bumbling
bureaucrats, uses witticisms instead of wadcutters, and verbally violates their
hollow and pointy heads instead of using hollow points on them.
The character of Inspector Harry Callahan, aka Dirty Harry, was a logical
backlash of the liberalism of the 1960's. During that tumultuous decade, there
was an explosion of crime and a breakdown of law and order across the board.
Many cities and towns, small, medium, and large, became virtual war zones. One
of the main reasons that Richard Nixon was elected President in 1968 was for
his pledge to restore public safety. People were getting fed up, not only with
the lawlessness, but the local, state, and federal government's seeming
inability to deal with it. That's where Dirty Harry makes the scene. The fact
that Dirty Harry is based in San Francisco was a particularly cheeky choice for
his work, as San Francisco, then and now, was a world capital city for liberals
and liberalism of every description. Dirty Harry, who would be about as welcome
in San Francisco as Hitler would be in Israel, was like a prototype for “The
Terminator”, except in the opposite direction; an indestructible one-man army
who speaks in catchy, short, monosyllabic words and phrases who wields fearsome
physical strength in addition to superior firepower. Unlike The Terminator, we
are cheering and rooting for Dirty Harry; well, most of us.
Although Dirty Harry never makes his political affiliations explicitly
clear, it's a pretty safe bet that he’s not a liberal. The first film in the
series, the appropriately-named Dirty Harry, from 1971, focused around a
psychotic serial killer named "Scorpio" who was obviously based on
the infamous Zodiac Killer, who terrorized the greater San Francisco area in
the late 60's and early 70's. The film is as much of an indictment of the
criminal justice system as it is of crazed killers like Scorpio, who is allowed
to make Dirty Harry look like Dirty Harry is a greater threat to society. O.J.
Simpson's defense team obviously watched this movie with some interest. After
Dirty Harry blows away Scorpio, he tosses his badge away in contempt, evidently
knowing that if he doesn't resign, he will be prosecuted by the same liberals
who allowed someone like Scorpio to run amok in the first place.
Favorite Line: “That's one thing
about our Harry, he doesn't play any favorites. Harry hates everybody.”
The second film in the series, 1973's Magnum Force, takes a sharp
right turn in the most literal sense. Dirty Harry is once again faced with
rampant criminality and a justice system that apparently is incapable of
functioning properly, but this time, it's not the usual suspects that are doing
all of the killing (besides him); this time around, it is vigilante cops who
are out-doing Dirty Harry in doing dirty deeds to rid the city of dirty people.
Although Dirty Harry isn't opposed to the serial killings of serial criminals per
se, he begins to suspect that fellow police officers are the ones trying to
put him out of work after one of his long-time police friends is gunned down
around the same time a drug dealer under police surveillance was. Dirty Harry,
for the first time in his copious cap-busting career, is faced with cops who
make him look like Clean Harry. Dirty Harry eventually cleans up the dirty cops
as only he can do.
Favorite Line: “Nothing wrong with
shooting as long as the right people get shot.”
The 1976 film The Enforcer once again swings Dirty Harry's perpetual
perp-icidal and recently police-icidal pendulum firmly to the left. The
mid-1970's was marked by numerous incidents of leftist domestic and
international terrorism, and even Dirty Harry, in addition to his usual enemies
on the street and within City Hall, was faced with a collection of foes more
heavily-armed and homicidal than him on his worst day. As if that wasn't bad
enough, in an early example of enforced political correctness, Dirty Harry was
force-fed a female partner who, unlike him, had absolutely no experience in
dealing with hardened hoods. Luckily for him, after a shaky start, she proved
to be a tough and valiant officer who wound up losing her life while trying to
save his. At the end of the film, Dirty Harry once again shows his contempt for
politicians, ignoring the grateful compliments and promises of reward by the
recently-freed mayor while he goes to reverently and silently stand by the dead
body of yet another fallen, faithful comrade.
Favorite Line: “Hypothetical
situation, huh? All right, I'm standing on the street corner, and Mrs. Grey
there comes up and propositions me. She says if I come home with her, for $5
she'll put on an exhibition with a Shetland pony...”
After a seven year break, we were suddenly impacted by 1983's Sudden Impact. In this movie, Dirty
Harry sort of swerves to the right again and revisits the theme of vigilantism,
ten years after Magnum Force, but
this time, instead of a squad of rookie cops, it’s a not-so-rookie artist who
is on a mission of revenge to round up and put the last roundup on the rapists
who violated her and her sister, who weren’t very amused by their malamorous ambush
under an amusement park pier. Dirty Harry, who coincidentally happens to be
vacationing in the area, has a fling with the vengeful woman, played by actress
Sondra Locke, who in real life was the holster to Clint Eastwood’s pistol. In
addition to the usual smoking of street thugs, Dirty Harry once again exposes a
case of police corruption. Unlike what happened to the police perps in Magnum Force, Dirty Harry allows this
particularly attractive vigilantess to get away with it.
Favorite Line: “ I saw the commotion
the other day; you're either a cop or public enemy number one.”
The final film in the series, The
Dead Pool, from 1988, has Dirty Harry fighting and killing all of the usual
dregs of society, in addition to one that he had neglected for far too long;
the news media! After putting away a well-known mobster, evidently in a
legally-supportable way and without the expenditure of several thousands of
rounds of small, medium, and heavy caliber ammunition, multiple car crashes,
foot pursuits, hostage situations, disarming of bombs, attempted airline
hijackings, stakeout ambushes, induced heart attacks, and the other usual
stuff, Dirty Harry becomes, of all things, a media hero. Dirty Harry proceeds
to validate his new-found “15 minutes of fame” by hurling an expensive camera to
its destruction and storming out on a female reporter who is as interested in
sleeping with him and she is in interviewing him. Clint Eastwood got a measure
of revenge of sorts, as one of the “victims” in the movie was closely modeled
on a certain woman who in real life was a film critic who regularly skewered
his films over the years, especially the Dirty Harry movies.
Favorite Line: “Fuck with me, buddy,
I'll kick your ass so hard you'll have to unbutton your collar to shit.”
In trying to summarize the character of Dirty Harry, overall, I’d say that
he is kind of like the classic virgin/whore paradox, in that we want someone
like him to do our “dirty work”, but at the same time are abhorred that it
needs to be done in the first place. The fact that each and every one of these
movies has made a handsome profit, and that Dirty Harry has beaten, bludgeoned,
shot, stabbed, hacked, stabbed, assaulted, and exploded into pop culture says
as much about us as it does about him. In an early example of (incidental) product
placement, sales of the Smith and Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum pistol, the gun
featured in most of the films, shot up overnight, and .44 Magnum caliber
pistols remain popular to this day.
