Dirty Harry

Capitalizing upon the iconic cynicism that spews from Harry Callahan’s (Clint Eastwood) mouth, Dirty Harry (1971) revolutionized the action film, giving it an unprecedented brusqueness. Depicting a cop who cares more about the ends than the means, Eastwood captures that amoral sense of justice while circumventing police and political bureaucracy.

After Dirty Harry’s introductory sequence demonstrates just how much of a badass Callahan is, whereupon we arrive at the classic “You have to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?” line, the narrative kicks in and positions Callahan against Scorpio (Andrew Robinson), a budding serial murderer who also lacks any conventional system of morality. Though the film hesitates to highlight this parallel and refuses to suggest that little actually separates Callahan from Scorpio, it is nonetheless implicit in any psychological reading of the film and its characters.

Linking Callahan up with a partner, Chico Gonzalez (Reni Santoni), who exists pretty much as the audiences’ stand-in to remind us of how innocent we are and what a badass Callahan is, we are slowly initiated into the realization that Callahan’s treatment of criminals is more justifiable than our own naïve conception. Alas, characters (namely, Gonzalez’s wife) do sometimes feel like the means to gathering out expository details from the past of the laconic when not iconic Callahan.

However, the idea of victims’ rights is developed and commented upon, both in positive (Scorpio’s victims) and negative (Scorpio himself) connotations, which lets the film aim for something higher than nonchalant, mechanical justice. And the film is thrilling, using each set-piece to further the story, rather than feeling like the formula that this process has since become.

As a result, though the film gets bogged down in highlighting Eastwood’s iconic cynicism, so that the dialogue occasionally feels more like a set-up to Callahan’s total badass par excellence, Dirty Harry works beautifully as an action film, creating a emblematic character and an adrenaline-charged experience.

Dirty Harry: 7.5/10