Dirty Harry
Composite Score: 81.93
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Andrew Robinson, Harry Guardino, Reni Santoni, John Vernon, John Larch, and John Mitchum
Director: Don Siegel
Writers: Harry Julian Fink, Rita M. Fink, and Dean Riesner
Genres: Action, Crime, Thriller, Drama
MPAA Rating: R
Box Office: $35.99 million worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
Dirty Harry is the classic crime thriller about Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) investigating a serial killer who is extorting the city of San Francisco. It came as part of a grittier take on the crime and police thriller genre during the late 1960s and 1970s and epitomizes that era well. Its action sequences are classics of their time with quality chases and showdowns. Eastwood gives a wildly cool performance as “Dirty” Harry, carrying a .44 magnum revolver, shooting first and asking questions later, and being just generally fed up with the world. It’s easy to see how this became a classic and how modern audiences might be a bit more split on it.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
Dirty Harry is one of the first in a line of films that can be defined as “We live in a society” movies, where the protagonist is a loner who doesn’t really like anyone or anything else but finds a goal or person that motivates him to overcome his jaded nature for a time being before ultimately giving in to it at the film’s conclusion (see also, Taxi Driver, Fight Club, Joker, etc.). On the one hand, there is something to be said for films that can successfully present critiques of modern society; on the other hand, these films tend to be heavy-handed in their criticism and draw love from a particularly incel-adjacent segment of society, and Dirty Harry is way up there in its heavy-handed criticism.
The film also fails to wow in a modern context because of its overt pro-militarized police messaging. Harry is a police officer who goes around shooting criminals with no trial and getting mad when he has to follow rules and respect the rights of suspects and the accused. In short, Harry is the personification of many of the problems with America’s legal system, not to mention his peeping tendencies and apparently racist prejudices (uses the s-slur at one point). At the same time, this incredibly flawed character is held up as the only guy with any sense, as if we should want the police to be able to just shoot whoever they think might be doing crimes because this one particular instance made it easier.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
Eastwood carries this film with his machismo and charisma. Everyone else in it struggles to maintain any kind of screen-sense against Eastwood’s brilliant character work. Messed up and morally bankrupt as he is, Dirty Harry remains an iconic character with some brilliantly written lines, which Eastwood delivers with a sense of cool that only he could manage. It’s like if the John Goodman robot from the dinosaur Transformers movie actually had good writing and line delivery. Of course, the most famous is his double delivery of the “‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?” and that holds up beautifully. It got me hype both times he said it.
Dirty Harry is an incredibly flawed member of the Greatest Films of All Time, delivering a film that is high on cool factor and low on promotable content. Clint Eastwood brings another iconic performance to the table in a film that simply wouldn’t get made by anyone but Ben Shapiro’s production company in 2022. It’s a film full of issues held together by an all-time cool performance and a story that feels at times like poetry, it rhymes. Now streaming on HBO Max, check it out with a grain of salt.
