Director: Buddy Van Horn
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Patricia Clarkson, Liam Neeson, Jim Carrey
Have I Seen it Before: Never. And now I’ve seen all of the Dirty Harry films.
Did I Like It: I’d been looking so forward to this one, given the absolutely bananas cast on display, all before they became anything that would be featured above the title. Carrey is here before Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) made him a permanent light in the firmament, and even before Neeson because “that one guy in cool films who isn’t Bruce Campbell” in Darkman (1990). I honestly don’t think I’ve managed to overhype myself on a movie this much since The Flash (2023).
I was really wanting it to be bananas, all the while knowing that I was setting myself up for a goodly amount of disappointment. It never even occurred to me that Carrey is only here in the role of the guy that they find dead in the first few minutes of a Law & Order episode.
There’s probably a reason that both Neeson and Carrey had to wait for another couple of years before they could be considered stars, and it is probably the same reason that Eastwood swore off the prospect of another entry in the series*. This is not the triumphant conclusion one might think of. It’s not oddly funny like The Enforcer (1976), but it might be unreasonable to expect a part five of a series to reach up to the heights of previous entries. The real damning thing here is that Harry may simply not be the hero that the 80s need. Gone are the days where most Americans felt lost amidst a world that was growing too fast for them, and seemed like it had gone completely insane. That’s where Harry thrived: being grumpy but strangely fair among people he would never understand. Now he just seems grumpy.
*He could have gotten away with—and probably be forgiven for—making the main character of Gran Torino (2008) the Unforgiven (1992) for Callahan.