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Dom Robinson reviews
He doesn’t break murder cases.
He smashes them.
- Cat.no: D 001019
- Cert: 18
- Running time: 98 minutes
- Year: 1971
- Pressing: 1999
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 22 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English, plus French and Italian in Mono
- Subtitles: 8 languages available
- Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Panavision)
- 16:9-enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £15.99
- Extras : Scene index
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
(Bullitt, TV: Mission: Impossible)
Cast:
- Inspector Harry Callahan: Clint Eastwood (Absolute Power, The Eiger Sanction, A Perfect World, True Crime, Unforgiven)
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 (TV: The Fugitive)
In Dirty Harrythere’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? Understand? That’s my policy.”
Harry : “Yeah well, when an adult male is chasing a 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…
When this film came out on video just over two years ago, it was the first timethat it had been released in widescreen format and it’s much more impressivein its original ratio than any time you’ve previously viewed this one ontelevision or video, this release capturing the panaromic views of SanFrancisco and the entire width of the director’s vision by being presentedin the original 2.35:1 theatrical ratio.
The picture quality is very good indeed for a film shot in 1971, althoughthere are occasional dropouts which come from the print used – certainlynothing to complain about though and the quality is about as good as we canever hope to expect. Even though the film is nearly 30 years old, Warnerhave done a good job of tracking down an anamorphic print and thebitrate is 5.62Mb/s, occasionally peaking over 7Mb/s.
All previous versions of this film in the UK were released in mono, but thankfullywe’ve been given a remixed Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack here for the English language.The music score really stands out too and that can be put down to the fact thatit was composed by Lalo Schifrin who composed the music for the televisionseries, Mission: Impossible and the film Bullitt.
Extras :Chapters :There are 22 chapters covering the 98-minute film which is a fair amount and a fullselection of chapters is available, unlike a number of Warner releases likeJFKwhich is incredibly poor offering only five choices, requiring you to seek out therest yourself! Languages/Subtitles :English is available in a remixed Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack while the Frenchand Italian suffer mono. Subtitles are available in eight languages: English (andfor the hard of hearing), Italian, Dutch, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese andGerman. Menu :A static menu with a black-and-white picture of Clint Eastwood in the same pose as thefront cover. Nothing else.
Dirty Harry is a great film that looks and sounds equally good, but if you’re lookingfor extras, you’re looking in the wrong place.FILM CONTENT : *****PICTURE QUALITY: ****½SOUND QUALITY: *****EXTRAS: 0——————————-OVERALL: ****
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1999
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.