The Dominator reviews
Dirty Harry
Distributed by
Warner Home Video
Producer:
Screenplay:
Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink, and Dean Riesner
Music:
(Mission: Impossible (TV))
Cast:
- Inspector Harry Callaghan : Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven, A Perfect World, The Eiger Sanction, Absolute Power)
- Bressler : Harry Guardino (Capone, Houseboat)
- Chico : Reni Santoni (Cobra, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid)
- The Mayor : John Vernon (Airplane II, Brannigan)
- Killer : Andy Robinson (Into the Badlands, The Last Days of Paradise)
- Chief : John Larch (The Fugitive (TV))
In
Dirty Harry, there's a sadistic and ruthless sniper on the loose
calling himself Scorpio killing women and anyone else who gets in his
way. The police are on the hunt, but getting involved in the case is the most
unorthodox of police officers the district has, namely Inspector Harry
Callaghan, aka Dirty Harry.
This is the first of five films with Clint Eastwood taking the lead role,
the rest being Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact
(1983), and The Dead Pool (1988).
Why 'Dirty' Harry? According to one of his colleagues, "Harry hates
everybody", before reeling off a list of all the racial insults under the
sun. His new partner asks, "What about Mexicans?". I'll leave you to
guess his reply. The new guy should worry though, as all of Harry's partners
seem to either end up in hospital or dead.
Dirty Harry is one of the best crime thrillers ever made. The director
Don Siegel has also filmed Clint in the western, Two Mules For Sister
Sara, and has made other reknowned films, such as The Shootist, and
the 1956 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
It has a perfectly cast leading man as the sarcastic cop who does his job his
way, and no-one else's. Even in the bank raid a few minutes into the film, as
the robbers come out, he fires his gun directly, and with little regard for the
fleeing public.
After shooting through the windscreen of the getaway car, which hits a fire
hydrant and turns over, he approaches the first robber he shot, now lying
on the pavement outside the bank. As Harry stops him from going for his shotgun,
he points his gun and delivers the most well-known of all of Harry's dialogue :
"I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six bullets, or only five?
Well to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I've kinda lost track
myself,
but being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the
world
and would blow your head clean off...you've got to ask yourself one
question...
'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do you, punk?"
Want another piece of classic dialogue? At the beginning of the film as Harry
meets the Mayor, his reputation clearly preceeds him...
Mayor : "Callaghan, I don't want any more trouble like you had last year in
the Fillmore district, understand?"
Harry : "Yeah well, when an adult male is chasing an adult female with an intent
to commit rape...I shoot the bastard, that's my policy."
Mayor : "Intent? How did you establish that?"
Harry : "When a naked man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcher
knife, and a hard-on, I figure he isn't out collecting for the Red Cross..."
Then for another you could also have a singalong of Row, row, row your boat,
gently down the stream...
This is the first time that Dirty Harry has been released in widescreen
format, and it's much more impressive in its original ratio than any time you've
previously viewed this one on television or video, this release capturing the
panaromic views of San Francisco and the entire width of the director's vision.
Picture quality is very good indeed for a film shot in 1971, although there are
occasional dropouts which come from the print used - certainly nothing to
complain about though. The sound is only mono, so just proves functional.
However, the music really stands out, and that can be put down to the fact that
it was composed by Lalo Schifrin who composed the music for the television
series, Mission: Impossible.
You just have one mission now though - to buy this excellent release, so
go ahead, and make your day....
Film: 5/5
Picture: 4/5
Sound: 4/5
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1997.
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DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
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