Director: Ted Post
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Hal Holbrook, Mitchell Ryan, David Soul
Have I Seen it Before: Never.
Did I Like It: First of all, in my review of Dirty Harry (1971) I noted that since Harry (Eastwood) spent the final moments of that film throwing his badge into the water, the opening minutes of this film pretty much had to have him wading into the water to go retrieve it.
No such luck. By all rights I should get over that little oversight, but thematically it’s a little hard to account for Callahan’s utter—and arguably justifiable—disgust with the system in the context of this movie. Not to spoil the plot of a fifty year old movie, but when it becomes clear that the real bad guys in this film are forces within the San Francisco Police Department*, Callahan has to throw away a quick line about how much he still hates the system, but has to live with it until it changes.
It’s an awkward—and unfortunately load-bearing—moment in an otherwise skillfully constructed thriller. Harry is a hero that I’m increasingly less dubious about headlining a multi-movie franchise. Those shots that are going to be the first up in obituary reels for Eastwood make Callahan seem like the kind of cop one hopes to not meet in a darkened alley, or in bright daylight, or really anywhere. The truth, though, is that Callahan might be a grump, but he is a decent man. He’s not interested in hurting anybody that hasn’t already gone out of their way to hurt other people. He’d even like to gently stop somebody who might hurt somebody from indulging in their worst impulses. He doesn’t kick ass when McCoy (Ryan) starts betraying his meltdown. He tries to talk him into hanging it up before something terrible happens. He doesn’t even sleep with McCoy’s wife, when the runway was absolutely clear. Are all cops bastards? I’ll leave that for other people to decide, but I would at least submit that Dirty Harry Callahan is at least a bastard for the angels.
*An odd paradox in this genre of kick-ass guys with guns starring guys who would be perfectly welcome at the Republican National Convention: They are weirdly, and pointedly, anti-police, or at least eager to admit that police corruption exists and is inherently difficult to route out. I’m surprised that the left haven’t adopted both this film and First Blood (1982) as their own.
