Review of Magnum Force (1973) by Jim E — 18 May 2010

The artful composition of the shots makes for a more aesthetically pleasing film than the first film (Dirty Harry). This film can be read as a response to the claim that the first film was ideologically fascist (see Roger Ebert's review of Dirty Harry): in Magnum Force, Harry is fighting extreme versions of the Harry from the first film: the bad guys are vigilante cops that illegally killing criminals. Therefore this film is ideologically opposed to the first film. But it would be easy to watch Dirty Harry and then this one and not notice an ideological difference, just because Harry seems to be the same guy. Even in Magnum Force he says that he "hates" the system, but that he's going to stick to it because it makes more sense than the vigilantes' system.

This is a very good movie for its genre, and I would argue that it is as good as Dirty Harry. It is a more interesting film in a way; it is a more conflicted film, since it shows the horrors of the criminals that the system fails to stop, as well as the horrors of the vigilante "justice". The film Dirty Harry leads us to think "we need to let cops like Harry just do their jobs, and not let rules and legal rights of criminals get in the way". It's a simple problem with a simple solution. After Magnum Force, we see that it is a much more complicated problem, and that whatever the utopian solution is, it doesn't involve individuals taking the law into their own hands.