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DIRTY HARRY It's a great title, it's a funny and evocative title. Of course it's a title that is so familiar it's hard to appreciate.
Directed by Don Siegal, the director of the best red scare sci-fi movie ever, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS from 1956. The opening shot clearly indicates a very skilled filmmaker at work: a panoramic atop a skyscraper, giving a sweeping view of San Francisco. The scene sets the stage for a series of high wide angle shots of the action down below. The best being a very exciting chase through a stadium (Candlestick Park?) that concludes with Harry wounding the bad guy at center field, the camera rapidly flying up, up, and away.
When DIRTY HARRY was first released it proved to be a huge hit and quite a controversial one. Roger Ebert famously claimed the film to have a fascist political message, but when reading the review now, it's clear Mr. Ebert is making a statement more about the political climate of the country circa 1971, and not so much condemning the film for said message.
The violence is pervasive, and very well presented, although lacking realistic special effects. The most powerful scene and most realistic: the police pulling a dead, naked young victim from a hole in the ground, and then panning to a shot of Harry looking down on the Golden Gate Bridge.
Andrew Robinson plays Scorpio (loosely based on the Zodiac killer), he gives such a creepy and at times humorous performance that you’re reminded of another creepy and funny actor, Willem Dafoe. Mr. Robinson kidnaps a school bus full of kids, and in a brilliantly twisted stroke of genius, leads the kids in a demented sing-along, like a field trip to hell. MAGNUM FORCE In the 1973 sequel, there's a vigilante killer knocking off all the most dangerous criminals in the city, and it's not Harry Callahan. Written by Michael Cimino (DEER HUNTER) and the master of Hemingway machismo, the surfer/screenwriter John Milius (BIG WEDNESDAY, APOCALYPSE NOW), there's more than a good chance that these two literate high-minded writers meant the title MAGNUM FORCE to be an intellectual's inside joke, an attempt at creating the action genre's first Magnum Opus. And although the movie never achieves great heights of prestige, the premise of MAGNUM FORCE is quite ingenious: the notorious Dirty Harry Callahan is being upstaged by a true conspiracy of justice.
The film has an impressive cast led by the always steady Hal Holbrook who would later lure Michael Douglas (THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO) into a similar conspiracy in THE STAR CHAMBER. And in one scene set at a firing range, we are introduced to a trio of young, future character actors: Tim Matheson (ANIMAL HOUSE), Robert Urich (LONESOME DOVE), and David Soul (STARSKY AND HUTCH).
Next came the less than impressive THE ENFORCER in 1976, which failed to live up to the franchise’s pedigree, and thus ended Eastwood’s second best star vehicle (behind The Man with No Name spaghetti westerns). Until... SUDDEN IMPACT Sudden Impact opens with a great sequence. Sandra Locke is involved in a heavy petting session with a very happy man in a car parked atop a cliff overlooking the San Francisco Bay. Ms. Locke unzips the man’s trousers, pulls out a piece, and blows the man’s balls off. The scene is capped by a nice Hitchcockian moment when Locke reflects on her crime in silhouette peering down on the crashing waves. Quick Cut. Close-Up of Locke’s floppy red hat flapping in the bay breeze. She turns to face the camera. Fade to Black. Very Vertigo.
We are then served a couple of paint-by-number action scenes to satisfy the desires of a rabid public, of which by 1983, after years of suffering through a recession, an energy crisis, the Iran hostage crisis, etc., were ripe for a good ass-kicking by Dirty Harry Callahan.
Finally we return to the scene of the initial crime. Harry arrives to view the “victim” lying in the driver’s seat, hands on bloody ball-less crotch. Which inspires Harry to lecture a fellow officer on society’s decay. But, Harry concludes, what really bothers him, is that his fellow officer could eat a hot dog at a bloody crime scene, a hot dog with ketchup. Nobody eats ketchup on a hot dog!
Richard Schickel makes a good point in his terrific commentary for the newly released Deluxe Edition, when he points out that as funny and sharp as the hot dog scene and the famous “Make my day” scene are, they kind of strike an off chord once we learn the origin of Ms. Locke’s vengence.
Eastwood, the director, juxtaposes the “red meat” action sequences with the more heavy-handed dramatic plot involving Locke. But, after one too many scenes of Harry literally being unable to avoid trouble, the film shifts exclusively to the far more compelling stuff. The armor of "Dirty Harry" is beginning rust, just as Locke's is beginning to shine. And it's in these juxtapositions that we begin to see the early themes that would permeate Eastwood's best work as a director. In SUDDEN IMPACT, Eastwood is playing around with the idea of American Mythology and Iconic ideals, and their impact on society. See UNFORGIVEN and FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS. Finally, Harry takes a working vacation to a seaside village to carry out his investigation into the de-balling of a growing number of men.
And guess what? Harry jogs. With his bulldog. Harry’s dog trips up a bicycling Sandra Locke. That’s right, Harry and the lovely blonde vigilante in a “meet cute”.
Harry and Locke have a drink. They find they have very similar philosophies about life, death and justice. Has Harry found his soul mate?
Which brings about one of the more intriguing elements you will find in modern American cinema, especially involving iconic action heroes: sexual tension between a vigilante cop and a vigilante criminal.
In the fantastic action-packed finale, SUDDEN IMPACT delivers. Set within a vacant carnival (the original location of Locke’s brutalization), our emotional empathy for the victim is elevated by a desire to see her, not Dirty Harry, blow these mother fuckers away. And not until all hope is lost do we long to see Harry come to the rescue. And boy does he, in an absolutely brilliant shot, Dirty Harry backlit against the carnival lights, stands framed with his Smith and Wesson in hand.
In what can only be described as, odd; the curtain falls, the credits roll, and we’re left with a most bizarre feeling of melancholy. Did we just witness the first Action-Romance movie hybrid? Outside of the man-love expressed between Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon (1987), SUDDEN IMPACT may stand alone. In all honesty, I think I’d much prefer the ActRom to the RomCom (romantic comedy) that has become the default setting for all Hollywood studios in search of a quick buck. Eastwood returned to the well once too often in `89 with THE DEAD POOL, while being the dullest in the series, it's actually not quite as bad as I remembered, but still, it's not worthy.
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