By Richard Winters
My Rating: 6 out of 10
4-Word Review: Harry investigates revenge killings.
Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) continues working in the San Francisco police department despite his perpetual disregard of proper police procedures, which gets many of the crooks that he has arrested freed due to legal technicalities. His superiors are frustrated with him, but since he does get results keeps him on the force though reassigned to the small town of San Paulo where he works with a sheriff Jennings (Pat Hingle) in hopes he’ll be less problematic. It’s there that he comes upon a case of various men being found shot to death in similar ways. This is being done by Jennifer (Sondra Locke) an artist in residence who 10 years earlier was raped along with her younger sister by a group of men and now she’s out to get her revenge by killing them off one-by-one. Harry is starting to piece together the clues but is surprised that Jennings is reluctant to follow-up on them giving him the impression that the sheriff may have something to hide.
The story is based on a script written by Charles B. Pierce better known for his rural horror movies from the 70’s that were shot in Arkansas and loosely based off of real events like The Town that Dreaded Sundown. This was meant to be a starring vehicle for Locke, but when Eastwood decided to renew the franchise after several years of dormancy, he felt the plotline here would be a good fit for the next Dirty Harry movie and thus hired Joseph Stinson to revise it.
The result is a mish-mash that’s never quite as compelling as it should. For the majority of the runtime Eastwood’s heroics and Locke’s crimes are working in a parallel universe and not connected making it seem like two different movies. Harry’s non-stop shootouts with crooks becomes redundant and cartoonish while Locke’s killings and flashbacks make it too reminiscent of other better-known films like I Spit on Your Grave and Death Wish. The bad guys are caricatures to the extreme making their moments boring and predictable. If the violence wasn’t so over-the-top you’d be convinced, like critic Pauline Kael mentioned in her review, that this thing was meant to be a parody.
Locke and Eastwood are both good and this is the last film that they did together as a couple before their break-up. In Locke’s case I liked how her cynical and brash persona mixes with Eastwood’s brooding and quiet one. Eastwood speaks more here than in the previous entries, but the character doesn’t seem to be evolving. The opening scene inside a courtroom where Harry is shocked to learn that the criminals he apprehended will be set free because he didn’t get a search warrant seemed ridiculous as after being on the force for so many years, and going through the exact same predicaments in the earlier films, that you’d think by now he’d learn his lesson and do things that conform within the legal framework, or at the very least not be so surprised when a judge sees it differently. The number of near-death shootouts he goes through is exhausting making me wonder how he maintained his mental state and didn’t take the vacation time when he’s asked even if he’s ‘not up for it’.
My biggest grievance though is with the structure. I really felt it would’ve worked better had it been approached as a mystery. We could’ve still seen the killings being done, but the identity of the killer would’ve been masked. Instead of Locke being an artist she could’ve been on the police force working on investigating the case and Harry could’ve started up a friendship/quasi relationship with her and at the start been impressed with her work only to slowly become aware that she was intentionally mudding the evidence. Sheriff Jennings too could’ve initially been portrayed as a ‘good guy’ with down to earth sensibilities that Harry liked and then as it progressed would his intentions become more dubious. The flashback sequences, which get interspersed throughout, could’ve instead been saved until the very end.
Spoiler Alert!
The film also continues to reveal Harry’s zig-zagging moral logic. In the first film he was all for playing outside the rules, then in the second installment he came to determine that vigilantism wasn’t the answer. Now here, by letting Locke off-the-hook and not arresting here, he’s acting like street justice is okay. It makes you wonder; is he really growing as a person and seeing things differently or simply floating along with whatever way the plotline wants?
My Rating: 6 out of 10
Released: December 9, 1983
Runtime: 1 Hour 57 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Clint Eastwood
Studio: Warner Brothers
Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube
Scopophilia 