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The Dominator reviews
Warner Home Video
- Cert: 18
- Running time: 98 minutes
- Year: 1971
- Cat.no: S015429
- Released: 8th September 1997
- Sound: Mono
- Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Panavision)
- Price: £12.99
- Extras: Original Theatrical Trailer
Director:
- Don Siegel
(Two Mules For Sister Sara, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956))
Producer:
- Don Siegel
Screenplay:
- Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink, and Dean Riesner
Music:
- Lalo Schifrin
(Mission: Impossible (TV))
Cast:
- Inspector Harry Callaghan : Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven, A Perfect World, The Eiger Sanction, Absolute Power)
- Bressler : Harry Guardino (Capone, Houseboat)
- Chico : Reni Santoni (Cobra, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid)
- The Mayor : John Vernon (Airplane II, Brannigan)
- Killer : Andy Robinson (Into the Badlands, The Last Days of Paradise)
- Chief : John Larch (The Fugitive (TV))
InDirty Harry, there’s a sadistic and ruthless sniper on the loosecalling himself Scorpio killing women and anyone else who gets in hisway. The police are on the hunt, but getting involved in the case is the mostunorthodox of police officers the district has, namely Inspector HarryCallaghan, aka Dirty Harry.
This is the first of five films with Clint Eastwood taking the lead role,the rest being Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact(1983), and The Dead Pool (1988).
Why ‘Dirty’ Harry? According to one of his colleagues, “Harry hateseverybody“, before reeling off a list of all the racial insults under thesun. His new partner asks, “What about Mexicans?“. I’ll leave you toguess his reply. The new guy should worry though, as all of Harry’s partnersseem to either end up in hospital or dead.
Dirty Harry is one of the best crime thrillers ever made. The directorDon Siegel has also filmed Clint in the western, Two Mules For SisterSara, and has made other reknowned films, such as The Shootist, andthe 1956 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
It has a perfectly cast leading man as the sarcastic cop who does his job hisway, and no-one else’s. Even in the bank raid a few minutes into the film, asthe robbers come out, he fires his gun directly, and with little regard for thefleeing public.
After shooting through the windscreen of the getaway car, which hits a firehydrant and turns over, he approaches the first robber he shot, now lyingon the pavement outside the bank. As Harry stops him from going for his shotgun,he points his gun and delivers the most well-known of all of Harry’s dialogue :
Well to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I’ve kinda lost trackmyself,
but being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in theworld
and would blow your head clean off…you’ve got to ask yourself onequestion…
‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do you, punk?”
Want another piece of classic dialogue? At the beginning of the film as Harrymeets the Mayor, his reputation clearly preceeds him…
Mayor : “Callaghan, I don’t want any more trouble like you had last year inthe Fillmore district, understand?”
Harry : “Yeah well, when an adult male is chasing an adult female with an intentto commit rape…I shoot the bastard, that’s my policy.”
Mayor : “Intent? How did you establish that?”
Harry : “When a naked man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcherknife, and a hard-on, I figure he isn’t out collecting for the Red Cross…”
Then for another you could also have a singalong of Row, row, row your boat,gently down the stream…
This is the first time that Dirty Harry has been released in widescreenformat, and it’s much more impressive in its original ratio than any time you’vepreviously viewed this one on television or video, this release capturing thepanaromic views of San Francisco and the entire width of the director’s vision.
Picture quality is very good indeed for a film shot in 1971, although there areoccasional dropouts which come from the print used – certainly nothing tocomplain about though. The sound is only mono, so just proves functional.However, the music really stands out, and that can be put down to the fact thatit was composed by Lalo Schifrin who composed the music for the televisionseries, Mission: Impossible.
You just have one mission now though – to buy this excellent release, sogo ahead, and make your day….
Film: 5/5
Picture: 4/5
Sound: 4/5
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1997.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.