Dead Pool
In many ways, Dirty Harry was really the original 80s movie cop (even in the 70s) as despite the fact that the movies themselves always tried to have a social undertone throughout, Harry himself was always spot on by having a nice series of one liners, the ability to outfight and outgun the bad guys by being the (far) more aggressive predator, and a penchant to get called out on the carpet by his superiors due to his tendency to always play by his own rules and in fact, virtually all of the actual 80s movie cops and action heroes in general managed to take a page or two out of his book. Technically, the first Harry movie of the decade was 1983’s Sudden Impact, an uneven misfire of a story that tried to balance a deadly serious rape revenge story that Harry was mixed up in with an unhealthy and unnecessary level of humor, none of which went down very smoothly except for the throwaway “Make my day” line in an early scene. The first true (and only) “80s style” Dirty Harry movie was this fifth and final one in the series released in 1988, ripped by many as being almost like a spoof instead of a real entry but what it really is about is the series adapting to the changing times while adopting a lighter tone and still finding a valid and important social topic to look into, that being the corruption of the mass media and our pop culture through both news outlets and the proliferation of horror films on the cinema landscape, creating a world where psychos copy their murders from the movies they’ve seen too many times and people committing suicide manipulating things so that when they kill themselves it gets broadcast on the nightly newscasts thus giving them one last desperate grab at the attention that they’ve always craved. The story begins with Callahan riding high after having put away another major crime boss (and picking off his hitmen who are coming after him almost as if for sport) when suddenly a whopper of a case falls into his lap in the form of a drugged out rock star played by none other than Jim Carrey, first seen badly lip syncing to Welcome To The Jungle before having a handful of highly lethal synthetic heroin shoved down his throat leading to a painful looking overdose death (with the real members of Guns N Roses cameoing at his funeral as well as the massive implication that Carrey’s character is merely a stand in for Axl Rose himself and ironically making the band look bad through their association with this movie). Turns out that Carrey was working on the set of a craptastic low budget horror movie being directed by Peter Swan (Liam Neeson also just starting out), a brash, flamboyant legend in his own mind whose movies appear to be awful even as he nonetheless still carries himself as if he were some kind of a great artist, a role that certainly could be inspired by any real life horror director even while Neeson pulls off the not so mean feat of making the character not only sleazy and arrogant, but likable as well. But the real twist here is when Callahan discovers that Neeson and some of his friends are engaged in a macabre betting pool (hence the film’s title) where they each make a list of celebrities and then sit back and wait to see which one’s picks die first (certainly the film’s major contribution on our modern culture to this day, as “Dead Pools” continue to be a rather twisted parlor game to certain types everywhere) which shows that (even if he is innocent of murder) he is certainly a death obsessed sick little puppy. And as it turns out, Carrey’s character (the star of his own movie) was on the list, as is Callahan himself it turns out, what with all the mostly positive media coverage that his various exploits in the field of law enforcement has generated over the years now having granted him his own level of celebrity as well. But there are also others on Neeson’s list and when they too start dying off, many look to Neeson as being the obvious suspect while Harry thinks that there may be something more to it. The film gently plays with and indulges in the usual aspects of a Harry movie, including having him “stumble into a robbery”, getting assigned a new Asian partner (Evan Kim, best known for wildly spoofing Bruce Lee in Kentucky Fried Movie) for whom he has his own dead pool going of how long it will take for him to be killed, and of course one of the best barrages of one liners Eastwood has ever had written for him in the part, nearly nonstop from beginning to end. Then there is the overriding aspect of the media creating such a freak show out of their news coverage that even Harry has to finally step on their toes as embodied by the female reporter character played by Patricia Clarkson, a woman who is seemingly fascinated by Harry himself due to the long standing reputation he has as being a true force of law and order along with perhaps a bit of a crush on her own part (although the romance never really goes anywhere) and she finally convinces Harry to go on a dinner date with her so that she can pick his brain and find out just what it is that makes the toughest cop in the city tick while also surviving yet another attempt on his life as well. Throughout the film, the idea of someone being driven mad by the influence of movies and TV shows while also seeking their own fleeting moment in the spotlight (both Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame quote as well as the “celebrities die in 3s” theory are referenced here) become very prevalent as one can remember the various attempts at heavy censorship in the 80s due to that very same fear that generations could be severely affected by such a thing as no holds barred artistic endeavors and thus pushed to the brink of insanity. Indeed, the killer himself (a shadowy, faceless persona for most of the movie) turns out to be none other than a walking deux ex machina who is only identified and revealed in the last twenty minutes of the film and moreso, we are told that his psychosis is so deep that he literally takes on the traits and personalities of various characters both fictional and real (including Neeson himself) and has thus carried out the murders to exact revenge on Neeson due to not only Neeson turning down his screenplay idea but also because he crazily believes that Neeson has somehow “stolen” his own dreams and nightmares to turn into his horror movies and thus takes the credit for them leading him to purposely frame Neeson and even possibly “take his place”. In other words, he is the living embodiment of every 80s censor’s worst nightmare who completely lives up to the theory of just how sick movies create sick people, albeit thankfully in this fictional alternate universe that is Dirty Harry. While the film tackles all this subject matter with a thankfully lighter 80s tone than the previous movies, it does go off the rails just once with an extended and elaborate chase scene involving Harry being pursued by a remote control toy car equipped with a bomb attached to it that is being maneuvered by the killer, a scene which takes the viewer both out of the movie and even the franchise itself since even the earlier entries never resorted to anything quite this dumb. Still, at least the tone is consistent and the film as directed by longtime Eastwood friend Buddy Van Horn never drifts into being boring at all, a welcome change from a couple of the earlier sequels which got carried away with their “message”. In the end, Eastwood plays his bread and butter part admirably, never falling into clown mode while still cracking us up with some choice dialogue as Neeson really shows his early chops here as the red herring with perhaps the meatiest supporting performance in the series outside of Andrew Robinson’s Scorpio Killer in the original film. With a brisk pace, proper concessions being made to the 80s action style, and the filmmakers’ own self aware realization at that time that Dirty Harry Callahan was indeed an iconic figure in the history of worldwide cinema (with several direct spoofs and references having already been dropped over the years leading up to this movie’s inevitable storyline), this final film in the franchise showed that it wasn’t afraid to celebrate Harry for what he is, that being cinematic pop culture’s most revered no nonsense cop who will never be forgotten and never truly be duplicated…
9/10