Dirty Harry (1971)

A tremendously controversial film, both decried as an apologia for fascism and hailed as the solution to a decade of rising crime, DIRTY HARRY propelled Clint Eastwood's career into the stratosphere while adding another archetype to join his Man with No Name in film iconography. Clint stars as Harry Callahan, a truculent San Francisco police detective well known for his vicious take-no-prisoners attitude toward criminals. With the city of San Francisco being terrorized by the psychotic killer known only as Scorpio (Andrew Robinson), Harry is assigned by the mayor (John Vernon) and Lt. Bressler (Harry Guardino) to...
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try to stop him, pairing him with reluctantly accepted new partner Chico (Reni Santoni). Scorpio kidnaps a 14-year-old girl and buries her alive, demanding a $200,000 ransom for her return. Harry is to bring him the money--alone. What follows is one of the most exciting ransom deliveries in film history. The prototype for most of the action films through the rest of the century, DIRTY HARRY rises far above most of them due mostly to an excellent script and Eastwood's gripping acting. That said, the main character's contemptuous attitude toward the Miranda law seems far more damning now that it did in the early 1970s.
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"You've got to ask yourself a question: 'do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?" Dirty Harry provoked a critical uproar in 1971 for its "fascist" message about the power of one, as it also elevated Clint Eastwood to superstar status through his most enduring screen persona. Harry Callahan (Eastwood, in a role meant for Frank Sinatra) is a sardonic, hard-working San Francisco cop who can't finish his lunch without having to foil a bank robbery with his 44 Magnum, "the most powerful handgun in the world." When hippie-esque psycho Scorpio (Andy Robinson) goes on a killing spree, Harry and new partner Chico (Reni Santo...
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ni) are assigned to hunt him down, but not before the Mayor (John Vernon) and Lt. Bressler (Harry Guardino) admonish Callahan about his heavy-handed tactics. Racing against a deadline to save a kidnap victim from suffocating to death and unbothered by the niceties of Miranda rights and search warrants, Callahan brings in Scorpio, only to see him released on technicalities. "The law's crazy," opines Harry in disgust, before taking it upon himself to ensure that Scorpio doesn't kill again. Directed in violent and efficient fashion by Don Siegel, with a propulsive score by Lalo Schifrin, Dirty Harry was the fourth Siegel-Eastwood collaboration after Coogan's Bluff (1968), Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), and The Beguiled (1970). Critics at the time strongly objected to the heroic image of a cop's violations of a suspect's Miranda rights, forcing Siegel and Eastwood to deny that they were right-wing reactionaries. All the same, Dirty Harry proved to be highly popular and spawned four sequels: Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and The Dead Pool (1988).
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Harry Callahan is een inspecteur die vuile klusjes opknapt, een hekel aan misdadigers heeft en dit met een revolver bewijst. Zijn bijnaam is dan ook Dirty Harry. Deze keer gaat het om een moordenaar die vanaf de daken van de stad het op kinderen heeft voorzien en na zijn arrestatie weer losloopt. Harry volgt hem ook in zijn vrije tijd maar dat kan hem zijn leven kosten.

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