Dirty Harry

Dirty Harry is the original conservative backlash movie, that shocked pundits all across the political spectrum, even as it was just accepted as another violent thriller by the general public. America in late 1970 was perceived as being under attack by revolutionary bombers, antiwar protesters, drug-crazed addicts, hippie perverts and sexual deviants. Right-wingers placed the responsibilty firmly at the feet of Liberalism, period. It was then that conservatives first charged Liberalism with the crime of being disloyal to those 'true American values', which they felt were under attack from all sides.

To make this right-wing fantasy float, the writers cobbled together a villain who personifies every criminal evil imaginable, a combination of the Zodiac Killer (a real public enemy), Charles Manson, and that shaggy insolent kid who's taking your daughter out on dates and doing God-Knows-What with her. Andy Robinson embodies a public menace so kill-worthy, he might as well be one of the giant ants from Them! Mister Rogers would stand in line to send this guy to the gas chamber. The writers make sure he gives off all the right negative vibes: he's longhaired, sexually ambivalent (or perhaps just whiney-psycho), and wears a Peace symbol for a belt buckle.

Up against a world that can create this monster, Clint Eastwood's Harry commands such respect that audiences laughed as he tortured suspects and taunted wounded prisoners. Many less enlightened Police officers since this film have taken Harry's attitude to heart; at its core, Dirty Harry is a license to intimidate and threaten. Audiences also booed the ridiculously exaggerated mayor and D.A., who repeatedly release Scorpio and other murderous scum, when in reality there'd be all kinds of offenses to hold them on. Dirty Harry demonizes the liberal authorities, who are seen as cowardly bureaucrats more interested in punishing Harry than neutralizing a killer. The mayor and police chief roles are filled by actors John Vernon and John Larch, who normally play slimy villains.

The film's ugliest tactic is using the actual names of fallen San Francisco Police officers over the titles. With the same lynch-mob logic that says anyone against the Vietnam war is betraying the brave soldiers who fought, the producers of Dirty Harry want the viewer to choose sides on the crime issue, now, using the yardstick they define.

When the film was new, The LA Times presented a big photo of Harry standing over the wounded Scorpio on the 50-yard line of a football field, grinding his heel into his suspect's leg wound. All the discussion did was highlight the schism in America over the issue. The real reaction to Dirty Harry wasn't so fair: generations of Americans influenced by the rigged stories and extreme arguments of films like this and Death Wish and many others, are convinced that government is corrupt, the Law is against the police and for the criminal, and that if you want justice (or to be a real man), you need to buy a gun.

And Dirty Harry is one ferocious movie, that upped the gore and cruelty quotient of the cop film. Scorpio slowly withdraws a stiletto from his foreleg in blood-oozing close-up. He pays a vicious black thug to beat his face to a pulp, so he can blame it on Harry Callahan. To make sure the job's done right, he taunts the thug with racial slurs. Harry does torment Scorpio when he can, but undergoes a torturous night himself when Scorpio plays with him like a cat with a mouse, taunting him with the imminent death of his kidnap victim. She's not spared either, and her horrible fate is shown in pitiful detail. Harry's position as the only thing between society and total chaos is underscored when Scorpio takes a whole busload of school kids on a death ride ... this is the kind of terror situation that only comic book supervillains or political terrorists have the stomach for. Hollywood soon learned that by making its action films less realistic and more cartoonish, messy controversies can be avoided. Since many a Savant reader has been raised watching films like Death Wish, Die Hard, Rambo and Judge Dredd, the point-of-view Savant's trying to express here might seem very alien.

Direct and unflinching, Dirty Harry publicly confirmed director Don Siegel as the great filmmaker he'd quietly been for twenty years. A no-nonsense storyteller, Siegel came to prominence as a police-procedural specialist in films like The Lineup, even though his finest work is the Science Fiction movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He'd previously teamed up with Eastwood in the equally right-wing Coogan's Bluff, that espoused the same ideas as Dirty Harry but couched them in a vaguely Capra-like "Mr. Earp Comes to Town" story of an Arizona cop loose in Manhattan. It's possible that neither Siegel nor Eastwood had personal ideologies to express in Dirty Harry, as both have been associated with much less conservative films before and after.

Shot in zoom-happy, grainy, ugly Panavision, Dirty Harry is efficient and cruel propaganda, and still has a hell of a macho kick. It's an irresponsible film that claims a higher morality while making sadism and social vigilantism into a feel-good spectacle. "I know what you're thinking ... did I fire six shots, or only five? Well, to tell the truth, in all of this excitement, I kinda lost count myself."

Warner Bros. brought out Dirty Harry a few years back in the same 'Clint Eastwood Collection' packaging, so you have to look carefully to see if you have the new disc or the old one. The new disc says "All new 2000 digital transfer" in the box on the back. The transfer is much better than the old one, which came out soon after the launch of DVD. Both were anamorphic 16:9, but this one is obviously from a much better element, for the colors are better and the picture sharper, cleaner and far less grainy. Now the grainy, dark night scenes look appropriately grainy - not just a sludge of black.

The feature has a bundle of goodies including the original promo, Dirty Harry's Way, and a new and lengthy docu called Dirty Harry: The Original. Robert Urich is the host. He reads a script that basically describes the movie as everything Savant has above, but concludes that Harry is just fighting for 'justice', and not the Law. Terrific. The numerous people interviewed for the new docu are also excerpted in a lengthy interview section. Eastwood dodges the responsibility issue, and John Milius embraces the film's philosophy (even though his follow-up The Enforcer goes out of its way to shift Harry's bad attitudes to other, Ba-ad cops). Arnold Schwartzenegger simply states what's so attractive about a hero who's a one-man vigilante, and comes off as more honest than either of them.

If you have the old disc, don't dump it if you want a Spanish language track or a pan-scan version of the movie, as the new disc has neither.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Dirty Harry rates:
Movie: Very good
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Docu, featurette, trailer, interview excerpts
Packaging: Snapper case
Reviewed: November 20, 2001