Review of Dirty Harry (1971) by Shih-Yao C — 05 Aug 2010

This is a police movie that generally exists and has many similar movies in nowadays. Dirty Harry is a classic film that contains all the basic elements about police film. It is a little boring to me because I can predict the next step they will take and even can see through the whole plot even if it was my first time to watch it. If people from our generation like me didn?t watch so many films which is full of thrillers, it might be an exciting movie to watch. But unfortunately, my appetite is feed bigger by those cool car chasing and exciting gun shooting so I don?t think this movie is interesting to me.

Directed by Don Siegel, who is an influential American director, Dirty Harry is a police movie that almost set the whole style of this kind of movies. Harry Callahan (starring Clint Eastwood) is a police that always keep his own justice in mind and do many dirty things for the police force. One day, a lunatic serial murderer, who call himself ?Scorpio? (starring Andy Robinson), kills people randomly to acquire huge amount of ransom from San Francisco?s mayor. Callahan is the police officer who is in charge of this case. In the process, Callahan is assigned a rookie partner whose name is Chico even though he doesn?t want a partner anymore. Under the pressure of the mayor, Callahan and Chico have to catch Scorpio to save all citizens from his threatening.

As a matter of fact, I don?t like the character Callahan because I think the way he acts is not coherent all the time. Being a policeman, he isn?t as upstanding as his partner Chico. Instead, he is too rash to take people?s life in consideration in advance so that it may somehow make them exposed to danger. In my opinion, I think that the importance of safety cannot be overemphasized so that every policeman should always keep it in mind. Only on the condition that people are safe is the time to put the criminal into jail. But I admit that his thought is not wrong, arresting Scorpio is an essential thing because he is a really dangerous character.

I think Andy Robinson is the best actor in this movie because he really makes me scared whenever he is going to kill someone. (However, I don?t like the character at all.) The most scaring scene to me is that Scorpio takes a school bus hostage and forces the kids to sing along with him. When I saw that scene, I was wondering if I were one of them, it might cast a shadow in my mind for a long time even when I grow up. Every time I saw Scorpio?s gruesome smile, I will have a goose flash all at once because it?s so eery and frightening. But I think it?s a symbol of successful acting to make the audience feel exactly like they were in the movie, not out of it.

All I can say is that Dirty Harry will be more interesting to me when I was 10 years old and when I didn?t see too many thrilling movie. But this movie is very classic so that everyone who loves this kind of genre should watch it at least once.