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I’m wondering if Harry Callahan sometimes walks into the wrong department at the precinct because he’s constantly assigned to different tasks. Whenever he defuses a situation by using his trademark brute force he’s being assigned to traffic or desk-duty like personnel. This also occurs in the third Dirty Harry movie titled The Enforcer. During a brief demotion to personnel he meets his latest partner: Kate Moore. She’s being put up for promotion after several years working for the human resources department on the simple fact that she’s a woman and that doesn’t sit well with Harry. Together they must try to locate a terrorist organization called the People’s Revolutionary Strike Force (P.R.S.F.) who are responsible for multiple murders, break-ins and eventually kidnap the mayor of San Francisco.
There are certain thins in movies that will guarantee a certain character won’t make it until the end credits: smoking pot or having sex in a slasher movie or simply being a character played by Sean Bean for instance. Another guarantee that a character won’t make it until the end credits is being the partner of Harry Callahan. In three movies he already has had four partners. The fun fact is that all of his partners mostly belong to a minority: In the original movie it was a Latino and in the second an African-American. In this movie he starts off with an older white guy and ends up with a young woman. The woman is played by Tyne Daly who would become famous for playing Lacey from the TV Show Cagney and Lacey. She’s an interesting choice, as she has a certain down to earth look to her. Normally a woman playing a lead in a movie is drop-dead gorgeous, but while she has a certain charm, Daly isn’t a Megan Fox. It makes the dynamic between her and Eastwood much more natural and removes the otherwise obligatory love-interest element from the movie.
But The Enforcer is very much a Clint Eastwood one man show with Daly tagging along, providing some comic relief. It’s Eastwood who gets the juiciest lines including a returning sarcastic “marvelous”. The writers have gone to much trouble to write scenes in which Callahan can do what he does best: take out bad guys with the aid of his trusty .44 Magnum. Herein lies also the trouble with the script that is too busy with setting up scenes for Callahan it loses focus on the overall plot. This is especially troublesome since the movie is only 96 minutes long. The story is about a group of terrorists who are planning something which mostly involves holding the city ransom in exchange for money. If this sounds familiar it’s because this was also the ploy for the original Dirty Harry, but now with a group instead of a lone mad man. It’s never made quite clear what the goal and the motivations of the group are. There are people inthis group out of a conviction, but the leader of the group only seems to care for money.
Due to the weak plot the strongest part of The Enforcer is Eastwood himself. The scenes in which he gets to do his now classic Dirty Harry shtick are the most memorable scenes of the movie. The scenes now have this somewhat lighthearted tone to them, like when he’s called into a restaurant where somebody is supposedly having a heart attack, only for him to start kicking the victim. It turns out he was faking a heart attack in order to get a free meal. Another classic scene is where Harry delivers a getaway car to a couple of robbers holding customers hostage by driving it through the window and taking out the robbers one by one, by shooting them. The final notable scene would be a chase scene between Harry and a suspect across the rooftops. At a certain point the suspect falls through a skylight in the middle of a bedroom where an adult movie was being filmed. This being the 70s and the movie having an R-rating, it’s filled with male and female full frontal nudity. It’s a funny moment that will catch everybody off guard.
Due to this the wobbly plot is easily forgotten. The P.R.S.F.’s only function is to have Harry and Kate end up at certain locations, most of them putting them in peril. The main aspect of Dirty Harry was how he as a cop was somewhat of judge, jury and executioner. It was a movie that glorified police violence.
In a way that is still the case here, but in The Enforcer it has become somewhat of a parody. There is a situation and Harry defuses it by handling over-the-top after which he is punished by giving him a desk job until a homicide job requires the touch of Callahan. The Enforcer makes it feels as if this is a constant circle in which Harry is stuck in and Eastwood’s performance which is a mixture of supplying his lines while grinding his teeth or deliver them with a sarcastic undertone, adds to the feeling that at this point the series is slowly becoming self-aware.
