Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Clint Eastwood
Tyne Daly
Directed By:
James Fargo
The Enforcer is the third movie in the amazing Dirty Harry series. You can split the franchise in two distinctive eras. The seventies and what came after. The Enforcer is the last film of the first era, who tried to produce some serious, hip and trendy cop movies. Those three movies happened to have aged to turn into the cutest piece of seventies memorabilia. Harry Callahan is a timeless badass, but his movies are filled with long, ridiculous chase scenes, music that one would identify with the pornographic industry and some thinking that clearly precedes the political correctness era. The Enforcer is dated, yes. But it's also a lot of fun and to me, the most politically charged movie of the series.
As usual, the movie opens with Callahan pulling an amazing stunt to rescue helpless San Francisco citizens held hostages and as usual he wrecks the shit out of the place they're held up and kill a lot of bad guys in the process. That angers his new boss (Branford Dillman), because the mayor thinks this is caveman mentality. These openings are somewhat of a running gag in the Dirty Harry series and this one is really good. Harry is demoted to Personnel department, but not for too long. San Francisco being a "modern" and "liberal" city in California (that reads "for pussies" in Harry's language), they can only get in trouble when he's not there. And they do. As soon as they lock him in an office, a bunch of cracked up Viet-Nam veteran turned into aggressive and degenerate hippies declare war to San Francisco.
You gotta love Old Harry Callahan. He's a poster boy for conservatism. In The Enforcer, he deliberately turns in ridicule the modernity the city is trying to embrace. He makes some extremely crude jokes at a mayor office representative, who wants to enforce the use of women in the police forces and yet, he's not a bigot. They tag a female recruit on him and he treats her the same way he would treat any guy. There is an obvious sexual tension there (the director might not have been as cool as the character), but Harry denies it like a champ. The Enforcer is an intriguing piece of post-modern art. It takes a long, quizzical look on what is called "modernity" and "progress" and manages to look back on it like it was a faceless scourge that makes America disappear behind a bureaucratic system.
The main defaults of The Enforcer lie in some of the more mechanical choices, rather than in the storytelling. Some scenes are ungodly long compared to others and whenever Clint Eastwood is not on the screen, the other characters look faded and cardboardish. I know the point was to make Callahan the shining star of the show, but I don't think a more solid cast would've hurt Eastwood's aura. Most of the actors are grossly overplaying. It's almost to a point where you feel everybody thinks it's a stage play, except the main character who knows he's in a movie. It's something that can rub you the wrong way, but I thought it's an element that comes with the charm of its era. It's nothing that should be taken too seriously, but it's also a good reminder that there used to be people like Harry Callahan who genuinely cared about the others and didn't just apply the law like a drone. It's an innocent and naive take against the emerging bureaucracy and it makes the movie endearing beyond just the simple fact that Dirty Harry is killing a shitload of bad guys again.
SCORE: 83%
As usual, the movie opens with Callahan pulling an amazing stunt to rescue helpless San Francisco citizens held hostages and as usual he wrecks the shit out of the place they're held up and kill a lot of bad guys in the process. That angers his new boss (Branford Dillman), because the mayor thinks this is caveman mentality. These openings are somewhat of a running gag in the Dirty Harry series and this one is really good. Harry is demoted to Personnel department, but not for too long. San Francisco being a "modern" and "liberal" city in California (that reads "for pussies" in Harry's language), they can only get in trouble when he's not there. And they do. As soon as they lock him in an office, a bunch of cracked up Viet-Nam veteran turned into aggressive and degenerate hippies declare war to San Francisco.
You gotta love Old Harry Callahan. He's a poster boy for conservatism. In The Enforcer, he deliberately turns in ridicule the modernity the city is trying to embrace. He makes some extremely crude jokes at a mayor office representative, who wants to enforce the use of women in the police forces and yet, he's not a bigot. They tag a female recruit on him and he treats her the same way he would treat any guy. There is an obvious sexual tension there (the director might not have been as cool as the character), but Harry denies it like a champ. The Enforcer is an intriguing piece of post-modern art. It takes a long, quizzical look on what is called "modernity" and "progress" and manages to look back on it like it was a faceless scourge that makes America disappear behind a bureaucratic system.
The main defaults of The Enforcer lie in some of the more mechanical choices, rather than in the storytelling. Some scenes are ungodly long compared to others and whenever Clint Eastwood is not on the screen, the other characters look faded and cardboardish. I know the point was to make Callahan the shining star of the show, but I don't think a more solid cast would've hurt Eastwood's aura. Most of the actors are grossly overplaying. It's almost to a point where you feel everybody thinks it's a stage play, except the main character who knows he's in a movie. It's something that can rub you the wrong way, but I thought it's an element that comes with the charm of its era. It's nothing that should be taken too seriously, but it's also a good reminder that there used to be people like Harry Callahan who genuinely cared about the others and didn't just apply the law like a drone. It's an innocent and naive take against the emerging bureaucracy and it makes the movie endearing beyond just the simple fact that Dirty Harry is killing a shitload of bad guys again.
SCORE: 83%