Dirty Harry (1971)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: When a madman dubbed the “Scorpio killer” terrorizes San Francisco, hard-boiled cop Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) — famous for his take-no-prisoners approach to law enforcement — must hunt down the psycho. In the course of rescuing a kidnap victim, Harry collars Scorpio, but he walks on technicalities. Not to worry … the maverick detective aims to nail the maniac himself.
REVIEW: A cop on the edge who recently lost his wife and can’t see eye-to-eye with his superiors takes on a new partner while solving an important case with which he has become personally involved. Sound familiar? It could be the plot from any action/cop film of the last 35 years, but it was Dirty Harry that perfected the formula (the first Lethal Weapon, in particular, borrows heavily from this set- up). In this case, the villain, who calls himself Scorpio and leaves cryptic messages in the newspaper, mimics San Francisco’s infamous Zodiac killer. The story was probably meant to show frustration with a legal system that allows admitted killers to be set free on technicalities, but the message just gets lost in the shuffle. It doesn’t matter if he’s wearing a cowboy hat and poncho or, in this case, a polyester-blend suit, Clint Eastwood is still the foremost tough-guy of the era, smirking and spewing classic lines as he calmly shoots bank robbers on a crowded street while finishing off his lunch. A classic of the genre.
4.5 stars
HAWK
