Dirty Harry

It was fine. Really. It was fine. I don’t hate it for having a lot of proto-versions of action movie cliches (the angry superior officer, the cop who gets things done his way, etc), it was made in 1971 for crying out loud. It’s nicely shot, and has a FUNKY soundtrack (seriously, I started playing air slap-bass). I liked the twist that they got Scorpio and had to let him go because Harry’s not following of procedure made the case impossible to prosecute, and that Harry knows going extra-judicial in the end will cost him his career. But the characters are paper thin — Harry is curmudgeonly, Scorpio is crazy, and everybody else has less dimension than that. The movie is a bit flabby in the length department, especially during the nighttime interview runaround sequence that basically inspired Die Hard With A Vengeance, except DH3 has constant energy and this was watching a middle-aged man wheeze about poorly lit San Francisco set pieces at night. It goes on for far, far too long. I don’t regret seeing it. It was fine. I’m not sure what I expected — definitely not an 80’s blockbuster action movie — but it was all a bit dry. It entertained, but it did not make me want to see the other Dirty Harry movies. It deserves its place as a classic for the tropes it birthed, but it is also proof that classics are not immune to becoming dated.