When Clint Eastwood first strutted onscreen as Dirty Harry in 1971, accompanied by the jazzy score of Lalo Schiffrin, he was a new kind of cop. Or, a new kind of old-school cop.
According to the movie's version of history, in the early '70s, big cities like San Francisco where Harry worked, were becoming overrun by liberals and crime. They needed someone unafraid of cracking a few heads to take the streets back. Enter Harry Callahan and his Smith and Wesson.
Dirty Harry The Ultimate Collector's Edition is a new DVD box set with scads of bells and whistles and all five Harry films, the 1971 original, 1973's Magnum force, 1976's The Enforcer, 1983's Sudden Impact, and 1988's The Dead Pool. And while some installments are clearly better than others, the real treasure here is the first Dirty Harry-the film that captured Eastwood as coolest and squintiest, and least mannered.
Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly Magazine reviews the new Dirty Harry DVD set.
Loosely based on the pursuit of San Fancisco's Zodiac Killer, Dirty Harry is the rare police procedural with wit, style, and glimmers of art. There's also a few scenes that are flat-out classics, like the one where Eastwood, while eating a hotdog, blows away a bunch of bank robbers, asking the last living one how many bullets he has left in his gun. Watch that scene and you're watching the exact moment that Clint Eastwood became a Hollywood icon.
In the end, you don't have to agree with the film's politics and I'm not even sure the filmmakers agreed with the film's politics to think that Dirty Harry's a great film. It is. If you don't believe me, go ahead and rent it. I promise it will make your day.