Review of Magnum Force (1973) by Stuart K — 01 Feb 2011

With Dirty Harry (1971) a huge success, Warner Bros. ordered a sequel to go into production straight away. It's a much more darker and savage film. Harry Callahan was accused of being a facist, but this film would prove who the real facists were, worse cops than Dirty Harry.

This has a group of vigilante traffic cops Davis (David Soul), Sweet (Tim Matheson), Astrachan (Kip Niven) and Grimes (Robert Urich) going around killing criminals, their latest kill is a gangster who has just found not guilty on a big crime.

Once again, Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) is on the case, but his superior, Lieutenant Briggs (Hal Holbrook) finds Harry's methods of sorting out crime as dangerous and irresponsible. Meanwhile, Harry meets the killers, not knowing who they really are, and they take a shine to him.

But, the murders go up, from a mobster's pool party to a notorious pimp. The traffic cops want Harry to become one of them, Harry refuses, and nearly pays the price with a hidden bomb, and decides to take down the traffic cops himselves, but they're all working for a big boss.

It's more violent sequel, and maybe that's a good thing. With a good screenplay by John Milius and Michael Cimino, Eastwood shows more action prowess on this film, and there's a good cast in this, David Soul is a hardass, and paved the way for Starsky and Hutch.