Dirty Harry

Dirty Harry

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When watching Dirty Harry it occurred to me that the 70s was an era when the tone of most movies was cold and bleak. The most famous movies from that era are stark and tackle serious topics. The Deer Hunter, Serpico, Taxi Driver, Death Wish and even Rocky are examples of movies that have a bleak, urban feel to them. Despite being set in sunny San Francisco Dirty Harry is also a movie which at heart is as gritty as the aforementioned examples.

Dirty Harry, which sounds like the title of a porno movie, is about a hard as nails detective working for the San Francisco police department. His ruthless methods are demonstrated in an early scene in which he takes out a couple of bank robbers with a Magnum .44; “the most powerful handgun in the world”. It’s a scene which is iconic to say the least and features a monologue from Harry ending with the classic “do I feel lucky” line. Together with “Go ahead, make my day” Clint Eastwood’s gifts to the pantheon of famous movie quotes.

Harry is what is now considered a cliche movie detective; the renegade cop who runs out of partners faster than he runs out of bullets, someone who plays by his own rules and at some point has to hand over his gun and badge to his superior. But the methods cops like Harry use are always necessary against the featured antagonist as there is usually no other way to stop them. The antagonist here is the so-called Scorpio killer, which is an obvious take on the Zodiac killer; a notorious and unidentified serial killer who was active in the late 60s and early 70s and who also made victims in San Fransisco. The Scorpio killer holds the city hostage by threatening to shoot random people if his demand of $200.000 in cash is not met. When some clever police work by Callahan leads to the apprehension of the Scorpio killer the movie presents its core political theme: because Callahan had no search warrant all the collected evidence is inadmissible.

Like Death Wish, Dirty Harry is a complaint against a society where criminals seemingly have more rights than the victims. When apprehending The Scorpio Killer Callahan violates his rights like denying him medical care. In the next scene he’s being reprimanded by the district attorney because the Scorpio Killer now walks free. Callahan’s response: “Well, I’m all broken up about that man’s rights.”

This attitude is something that you could not get away with in a movie made today. In the 70s things where more black and white, especially in movies. The Scorpio Killer isn’t merely a calculating guy trying to get rich by killing some people, he’s one cold sadistic bastard. He taunts Callahan by saying he’s going to kill a girl he has kidnapped despite having received the ransom money; he is evil incarnated. This makes it easy for the audience to see the things Callahan sees them and applaud his methods.

Director Don Siegel uses San Fransisco to its fullest making it an uncredited character in this movie. The sunny environment creates a movie with a warm and colorful palette to lighten the stark and cold right wing message. As character development goes the Scorpio Killer is a somewhat one dimensional character who’s just evil for the sake of being evil. Even his targets have a pattern of people belonging to a group who, especially in the 70s, needed a white male macho type to protect and to stand up for them: a young woman, a young black gay man and a priest.
Eastwood’s Callahan is an iconic movie persona who actually has one unique selling point: he is insanely cool.

Callahan is the archetypal anti-hero: a man who doesn’t follow the rules and who gets the guy he’s after no matter what. The dialogue is juicy and colorful and the writer supplies him with the best lines. When asked how he knew that a woman was going to be raped by a man chasing her he responds “When a naked man is chasing a woman through a dark alley with a butcher knife and a hard on, I figure he isn’t out collecting for the Red Cross.”

Dirty Harry is obviously inspired by the exploitation genre which was alive and kicking at the time of its release. There are two scenes which feature gratuitous nudity and serve absolutely no function to the plot. In both cases the nudity on screen is a result of Callahan spying on people by looking through their windows like a regular Peeping Tom.

Dirty Harry has aged quite well, save for the political message. This is a fast paced movie, which features some famous classic lines and is quite surprising in the approach it takes with the killer and him turning the tables on Callahan during the final act. It gave the world one of the most memorable movie detectives and created a template for renegade cops which is still being used today.


Dirty Harry (1971) poster
Dirty Harry (1971) poster
Dirty Harry
  • Year:
    1971
  • Director:
    • Don Siegel
  • Cast:
    • Clint Eastwood
    • Andrew Robinson
    • Harry Guardino
    • Reni Santoni
  • Genres:
    Action, Crime, Thriller
  • Running time:
    102m

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