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.