Dirty Harry (1971)

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 10 out of 10

4-Word Review: Cop doesn’t like rules.

A psychotic who goes by the nickname of Scorpio (Andrew Robinson) has pledged to kill one person a day unless the city of San Francisco forks over $100,000 with his first victim being a woman (Diana Davidson) taking a swim in a pool on a rooftop of a high rise. The mayor (John Vernon) agrees to give into the killer’s demands much to the objections of Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) a hard-nosed cop who believes criminals are coddled by the system at the expense of their victims. Yet Harry, who’s known by his fellow cops as Dirty Harry, which he acquired for his well-known ability to circumvent rules that he doesn’t agree with, must go along with the demands of his department forcing him to act as the delivery of the ransom. This causes him to go through the humiliation of running all around the city at the whim of Scorpio who gives him directions of where to go next via different pay phones in the area. When Harry almost gets killed by doing this and then asked to be the delivery guy again, he walks out insisting that appeasing the killer is the wrong way to go. This causes even further irritation when Scorpio is later caught by Harry and then freed on a technicality convincing him that he must work on his own time in order to get the Scorpio put away permanently.

The script was written by the married team of Harry Julian Fink and his wife Rita. The inspiration came from the real-life Zodiac case who terrorized the city of San Francisco during the late 60’s and was never caught. The main character was supposed to be someone in their 50’s and was originally offered to Frank Sinatra, who had difficulty holding the Smith and Wesson gun, and decided to bow out. It was then offered to Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, who had just gotten done playing a cop in a movie and didn’t want to have to do another one, as well as George C. Scott and Burt Lancaster who both rejected it due to their feelings that the story’s theme was right-wing.

As a cop film it’s by far one of the best and has a lot of unique moments. Because Bullit had come out just a few years earlier, which featured a very famous car chase, it was decided not to replicate that one and instead we get treated to some very exciting foot chases with one occurring inside a factory mill and another at Kezar Stadium late at night. What makes these chases so interesting is that there’s no musical score played over them like in most movies, but instead we hear the pounding of their feet on the pavement and other outside ambience that helps to make these sequences grittier and more captivating. When the music does get played it’s when Scorpio is aiming his rifle to kill someone, but has the distinct sound of female vocals, which composer Lalo Schifrin put in to represent the voice he felt Scorpio was hearing inside his head.

Eastwood has made a career of playing this type of role, but here it comes off as fresh and like it was perfectly written for him and no one else could’ve played it better. His patented grimace and squint really work here and it’s interesting seeing the way his crusty exterior softens a bit as the film progresses and I liked the contrast of pairing him with a younger, less experienced cop, played Reni Santoni, that Harry initially thinks very little of, but eventually grows to like and respect. The conversation that he later has with Reni’s wife, played by Lyn Edgington, in which they discuss the emotional toll that being a cop can do to an individual really exposes the challenging job that it is as does Harry’s night on patrol where he’s forced on the spot without preparation to take on many difficult tasks including talking a man down from jumping off a building. This all helps to unglamorized the life of a cop while also revealing the underlying stressful nature of the position and why so many men and women that do it will eventually get burned out. 

Andrew Robinson, in his film debut, is excellent as well with a distinct eyes and face that looks constantly creepy. Normally I’d complain that we learn very little about his character nor the motivation for why he kills, but keeping him as an enigma helps put the focus on the main message, which is the rights of the victims and cops who try to protect them and by making Scorpio have a distinct personality would’ve humanized him and thus deluded the theme. Even so Robinson makes the most of each scene he’s in and he consistently stands out no matter what he’s doing, like the almost comical facial expression he makes when he gets stabbed in the leg. I also liked how after he does get stabbed that he then continues to walk and run with a limp versus other films where someone gets injured and they quickly recover, and it eventually becomes all but forgotten. 

Spoiler Alert!

My only complaint is how at the very end Harry throws away his badge and walks off the job. Director Don Siegel and Eastwood argued about this with Eastwood feeling Harry wouldn’t do this as being a cop was the only job he knew and his relentless pursuit for justice and putting bad guys away would overpower his urge to quit. Even if he was unhappy with some of the police procedures, he’d still put up with it, or fight to improve things from within. This is why at the end he should’ve taken out his badge and looked at it like he was thinking of throwing it, but then eventually put it back into his pocket. 

My Rating: 10 out of 10

Released: December 23, 1971

Runtime: 1 Hour 42 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Don Siegel

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube