Opening as mob slime-bucket Mr. Ricca smugly leaves the courthouse on acquittal, Magnum force shows the rage of the people. What do they think of they system? 'Frig' the courts, they scream. Somebody agrees, wiping out Ricca and his crew at close range just minutes after they head home. Harry Callahan, still on the force, lobbies for a chance to find the perpetrator, using a mix of procedural work and his own unique methods for closing in on the solution. But as more deserving losers - pimps, drug-dealers, etc. - begin to bite it in eerily swift and easy fashion, Callahan must question his own relationship to The System, and the value of vigilante justice.

At two hours, Magnum Force has put on a few pounds from Dirty Harry's early days. Though the first movie took its time in spots, Force takes too much, throwing in minor subplots that go nowhere with extended crime scenes that eat up valuable minutes, only to set up maggots for rough justice. Director Ted Post and screenwriter John Milius illuminate Callahan's spare interior life with an actual trip into his apartment, while getting sidetracked by a quickie, pointless love connection. If we're throwing Callahan a bone, let's make it one integral to the plot, and not something to roll eyes at, shall we? And as Milius explains in his commentary track, drawn-out crime scenes might work better through quicker, verbal set-ups. Five minutes of a pimp abusing a prostitute establish nastiness in blunt fashion, but draw focus from the central conceit with too much detail.

A few other weaknesses crop up, little illogical bits that shoehorn characters into position without regard for realism. From my standpoint, for instance, if I have two bags of groceries in my hands, and I walk up to my front door while listening to my phone ring, I'm not going to then turn around, walk back down to my mailbox and fumble with my mailbox key while joyfully eating a celery stalk. Just saying, is all. The mail can wait. With bits like that nagging the consciousness, we also must worry about Callahan becoming a parody. The moment he steps onto an airport tarmac, dressed as a pilot, in order to stop a hijacking, alarms go off. The fact that he does this in mid-chew on another interrupted lunch just intensifies the winks to the camera.

But it's a bit like the vigilante pull, isn't it? Machiavellian bad deeds for a good cause, and in the case of Magnum Force, the ends do justify the means. Even though the series begins to teeter on the edge of parody and self-indulgence, conflict deepens Callahan's character. Tackling with bullishness a deranged psycho in Dirty Harry, Callahan was considered a violent neo-fascist by some. Battling those who take his anger at the system a few steps too far, Callahan must examine his own motivations. How to reconcile rage at a bureaucracy that coddles criminals with a force that completely sidesteps the system to which Callahan has entrusted his life and soul? In typical Dirty Harry fashion, this conflict is only referenced obliquely, in favor of topless mob molls getting liquidated in swimming pools - clearly part of the franchise's charm. Ultimately, these ambiguous, coldly gleeful murderers make far more disturbing villains than the maggots they erase, a conceit that (for its time) makes Magnum Force decidedly edgy.

Examining the extent to which Callahan is married to his job and ideology, and opening a new chapter in procedural villainy, Magnum Force is a worthy successor to Dirty Harry. Needless plot padding, and glimpses of self-referential parody blunt this Magnum's force slightly, but not enough to lessen the appeal. In fact, the appearance of three more sequels down the road would indicate that, for good or ill, the cinematic shells that Magnum Force launched were flying in the right direction.

The DVD

Video:
Presented in widescreen (2.35:1) ratio enhanced for widescreen TVs, Magnum Force looks, like its predecessor Dirty Harry, amazing for a 35-year-old movie. Except for a couple instances of flaring around the border in one dark apartment scene (from the source) darks are nice and deep, colors are fairly rich and skin tones pretty naturalistic. The image is clean, with just a little film grain in some backgrounds, and nicely sharp. I noticed only one minor instance of print damage, and really no compression artifacts.

Sound:
As with the Dirty Harry Deluxe Edition, we get English 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound, and four additional Mono Audio Tracks, in French, Spanish, Japanese and Portuguese. My stereo speakers and faux-surround sound setting reveal an active, enveloping mix. Dialog is clear and understandable, with very little hiss and no conflicts with sound effects or soundtrack music. Again Lalo Schifrin provides the score. His jazzy, funky motifs are intact - especially in the striking and stark intro, but in other places begin to resemble television 'cop music' from the '70s. Though an indication of Schifrin's influence, (or ubiquity?) to the modern viewer this soundtrack sometimes borders on goofy.

Extras:
A standard sized keepcase nested in a plastic slipcover, with a cool broken glass effect for Callahan's magnum to stick through, makes this a fun package. For starters, you get English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese Language Tracks and Subtitles. To get you jazzed up for Dirty Harry's oeuvre, there is a Trailer Gallery with one-plus-minute trailers for all five Dirty Harry movies. A 24-minute featurette titled A Moral Right: The Politics of Dirty Harry combines clips from the Callahan catalog, as well as interview segments with filmmakers, social scientists, historians and authors, to examine the times and concepts dealt with in this movie series. It should deepen understanding among Dirty Harry fans, and is well worth a look. The Hero Cop: Yesterday and Today is a 1973 promo piece for Magnum Force that aims to both look at how Dirty Harry fits in with his cinematic forebears while hyping viewers up for the movie. It's good nostalgic fun and of decent interest. A full-length Commentary Track by the screenwriter of Magnum Force, John Milius, is disappointing. Containing regular lengthy silences of a minute or two each, the commentary effectively fills less than half of the run-time. When Milius is speaking, his comments are often only a short sentence or two. Though he does on occasion deliver good insight into how his screenplay works, where on-set inspiration diverges from the written word, and especially some funny stuff about Eastwood's parsimonious fiscal policies, plenty of the track is lame. He'll half-heartedly describe obvious plot-points and toss out unexamined anecdotes. Or he'll say something brilliant like "but it's, you know, a typical kind of movie scene, you know." Overall it's an aggravating and uninteresting commentary that does as much harm as good.

Final Thoughts:
Magnum Force expands on the Dirty Harry mystique, adding a little depth to his character and more nice moral ambiguity for the times. With plenty of grim, riveting set pieces and action it's a solid follow up to the previous classic. A little bit of bloat - go-nowhere subplots and illogical occurrences - together with the beginnings of Dirty Harry parody keeps this from being a genuine classic. Nonetheless it's quite entertaining in its fashion and was hugely influential on police procedurals to come (from the standpoint of the villains Callahan faces). That said, the semi-light load of extras and a substandard commentary track make this a middling bet for Dirty Harry collectors and merely Recommended for the rest of us.

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