DIRTY HARRY (includes trailer)
August 18th 2010 12:03
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, ''did he fire six shots or only five?'' Now to tell you the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and will blow you head clean off, you've gotta ask yourself one question:
''Do I feel lucky?''
Well, do ya, punk?
Dirty Harry - directed and produced by Don Siegel
Prolific tough guy film maker and general story teller extraordinaire Don Siegel (The Shootist, The Killers, Coogan’s Bluff) was the producer and director of the first Dirty Harry film, which would spawn four other sequels and demonstrate what an action film could be on it’s best day. Made in 1971, starring Clint Eastwood (Grand Turino, The Good The Bad & The Ugly) as Inspector Harry Callahan, the hard nosed cop, with his face buried in the ugliest cases. Callahan has a penchant for violence, a fondness for his Magnum 44 and shoots straight from the hip. Eastwood’s thrilling and sometimes dryly comical performance of Harry Callahan made the actor and his character a house hold name. To this day, Dirty Harry hasn’t lost it’s edge, remains fresh and established one of the most entertainingly archetypal cop characters in action films.
Set in the colourful and, from the looks of things, very windy city of San Francisco, the number one criminal set in Callahan’s sights, takes the shape of a rooftop sniper known as Scorpio. Lalo Schifrin’s jazzy, ground breaking score sets the mood, as Scorpio picks off his first victim from the top of a building, and he will keep killing until Harry can put a stop to it – now if only the law would stop getting in the way!
Clint Eastwood is Dirty Harry
The city of San Francisco is shot with long lenses by cinematographer Bruce Surtees (Lenny, White Dog, Play Misty for Me), as his camera anxiously scans the city in almost voyeuristic fashion. Scorpio threatens the city with kept promises of killing one person a day until paid his money. As Scorpio holds the city at Ransome, Callahan is the bag man – delivering the money to Scorpio as he keeps everyone on their feet, but it’s when Callahan and Scorpio finally come face to face that things become REALLY ugly. Being pushed to his limits, we find out why they call him 'Dirty Harry' as his no nonsense, aggressive working methods begin to bump heads with the ‘always following procedure’, overly cautious police department and those damn courts and their lack of admissible evidence.
The verdict – sensational!
Dirty Harry shows Clint Eastwood off at his very best as he portrays a cop who shares the very same killer instincts as the criminals he hunts. Harry Callahan doesn’t care for politeness and says what’s on his mind in a blunt bullshit free manner, which make for some of the most hilarious and quotable lines of all time. Don Siegel directs a punchy, thrilling, tense, sometimes comical and always action packed first Dirty Harry with smooth and stylish direction, that would be the series' best.
Everything director Don Siegel does, is for the purpose of hard hitting story telling, adding a wonderful intelligence and knack for behaviour and character that make Dirty Harry a diamond in the rough in comparison to the sea of so many other brain dead action films out there. Siegel’s skilful and fresh approach to the material moves the film along at a swift pace, which includes a couple of powerhouse camera moves and moments, especially where the camera fly’s away in terror at the sight of Callahan torturing Scorpio. All at once we relish the moments where Clint Eastwood’s performance of Harry Callahan makes us cringe and chuckle as we slowly get a bigger picture as to what makes him tick.
The casting is perfect here, while Eastwood was born to play this character, it’s actor Andy Robinson who fits the role of Scorpio so well, his fattened facial features and that mad, mad look in his eye creates a psychopathic and unpredictably unhinged killer that anyone would fear and does a first rate job of getting stuck right in Eastwood’s craw, with his high pitched, whiney voice and weasel-like demeanour. Robinson was an actor who appeared in probably every big TV show of the 70’ and 80’s but is most remembered for his role as Larry Cotton in Hellraiser. Scorpio puts Callahan and San Francisco through the wringer with one demented, murderous antic after the next and it’s much of Lalo Schifrin’s score, which was inspired by Miles Davis’s album – ‘A Tribute To Jack Johnson’, that lends to how 'on edge' the scenes feel, along with the actors, and most of all - it’s damn good writing, portraying Callahan being pushed to the point of vigilante, which questions the very fabric of right and wrong in law and order.
The real antagonist in Dirty Harry is the system itself, over flowing with red tape and hypocrisy that allows Scorpio to take as much advantage of it’s rules as he can and lawyers preaching about his ‘rights’. This is a theme that would be repeated in the other Dirty Harry films to follow, but it’s in this first film where the ideas are portrayed at their most deft and memorable.
Scorpio gives Callahan an obstacle course to tackle which would be echoed twenty five years later in Die Hard 3 and probably many other cop films too. Dirty Harry is a tightly scripted, finely directed and damn entertaining gift and it’s Eastwood, here at his best, that really gives the film it’s impact that would become such a large icon of pop culture. Dirty Harry is as entertaining a cop film as you can get and it’s one of the few that really know what it’s doing and as a result it’s a film I’ve returned to time and time again.
Andy Robinson as 'Scorpio', a performance that can cause nightmares
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Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic
It's amazing how nearly every time Eastwood does an interview and his past is brought up, he mentions Siegel. The man had so many undervalued films in his back-catelogue.
Comment by ShaunK
Screen Adventure
Cassavetes review - Love Steams is one of his master works
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
And Scorpio is Larry?! How did I never put that together.
Comment by ShaunK
Screen Adventure
There's much enjoyment in this film - I also love the second one. It's definitely worth recording your opinions on a favorite film.
Comment by The wonderful Peter Yang
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Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
Certainly an all time favourite and one that serves as a template for so much that came later.
Don Siegel knew his craft and importantly knew Eastwood's limitations and managed to maximize every frame of Dirty Harry.
Comment by ShaunK
Screen Adventure
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
I saw this when I was quite young and impressionable, at the movies, no less! It was rated GA (General Exhibition, but recommended for adults), and afterward I was suitably shell-shocked and wondered if the GA had been a misprint. The long-shot image of the police pulling the naked body of the young girl from out of the ground was so nightmarish, it still sticks in my mind. And Scorpio having himself beaten to a pulp in order to frame Harry also disturbed me considerably.
Dare I ask the question, but when will this inevitably be remade, with some soft cock like Mark Wahlberg playing Harry ...?