Review of The Dead Pool (1988) by Richard D — 13 Mar 2018

Heavy metal star Johnny Squares (Jim Carrey) dies of a drug overdose on the set of the latest film from horror movie director Peter Swan (Liam Neeson) and Harry Callahan is on the case. (Would homicide be called to investigate a drug overdose?) By a complete and utter coincidence, Callahan happens to be on the scene when someone connected to the film shoot is killed during a robbery, and he becomes of aware of a game Swan is playing .

.. a "dead pool", a bet on which celebrities will die in the next year. Squares was on Swan's list, implicating him in the death (I guess ... still seems super unlikely). But wait ... Callahan is also on the list since a contract has been put on his life by a mob kingpin he testified against.

Is he next? No, but he's coming up soon. This last of the Dirty Harry film's is definitely the least of the series, but it's a whole bunch of dumb fun. It makes noise about maybe being about the amount of violence in horror films, or maybe about media sensationalization of violence (Harry gets involved with reporter Patricia Clarkson), but really it's about none of that.

It's about Harry being Harry and being chewed out by his bosses (for really implausible reasons this time around ... he actually gets yelled at because mobsters wreck his car trying to kill him) and beating up dumb punks and taking on a crazy yahoo at the end.

There's a lot of fun moments in this ... Carrey acts through the roof while lip syncing to Guns 'N Roses, Harry is chased through the streets of San Francisco by a model car filled with explosives.

It makes less sense than any of the previous entries in the series, but it does what it's supposed to do, even if it does it only kind of okay.