Review of Dirty Harry (1971) by Timothy V — 20 Jan 2013

"Do you feel lucky punk?".

The story is pretty basic. A kidnapper has abducted a little girl and buried her alive, giving the police a limited time to cough up the cash before she suffocates. Enter Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan(Eastwood), sort of a white Shaft, if you will. He's a bad-ass motherfucker who lives to make the existence of his superiors a miserable one, and refuses to play by the rules. Granted, every cop movie since then has emulated this rogue cop pattern, but when Eastwood did it, it was still fresh. Dirty Harry doesn't wear Kevlar and he doesn't carry an arsenal of automatic weapons. All he need is his .44 magnum. Six shots doesn't seem like much, but it's enough when you rarely miss. This movie has the 70's funk all over it, God bless it.