Enforcer
Whereas 1971’s Dirty Harry raised serious questions about the extent of the lengths that those in law enforcement would have to take in order to protect society from certain select criminals that were highly dangerous and 1973’s sequel (Magnum Force) commendably addressed at least some of those issues head on, when it came time in 1977 to produce the third of the series, it appears that the go ahead was made to turn this one into a more straightforward, standard police procedural than the earlier entries, more like an early entry in the cop buddy movie sweepstakes than anything else. There are hints of current trends at the time like feminism and homegrown militant terrorist groups, but for the most part the substance was replaced by a slick TV cop show vibe that was barely enough to carry the film through. Returning star Clint Eastwood was originally slated to direct, but having just completed double duty on The Outlaw Josey Wales, found himself unable to have enough prep time to do both on this project, instead promoting his First Assistant Director (James Fargo) into the director’s chair. The film begins with a legendarily scrumptiously sexy hippie girl casually hitting up two gas meter men for a ride. But it’s actually a setup as the two meter men are drawn out into the middle of nowhere and then brutally murdered so that her crew can obtain their truck. Meanwhile, Callahan is happily out on patrol around San Francisco, finally partnered up with his longtime best buddy Frank DiGiorgio (series regular John Mitchum) when they come across Harry’s specialty, a hold up that has become a hostage situation. Harry as expected deftly takes the scumbags out, but of course there is hell to pay for the cost of damages incurred, leading to him being temporarily demoted to the personnel department where part of his job is grilling young recruits to determine if they are fit for duty. Meanwhile, our cute hippie girl and her hippie friends have decided to form a “People’s Army” so that they can commit crimes “for the People” when in reality they’re just looking to make a killing in the ransom money business. They use the gas truck to enter a secured area and steal a very large cache of weapons, but unfortunately DiGiorgio (first on the scene) is killed attempting to apprehend them and the beautiful hippie girl is shot dead as well (making her the last of the villains whom we actually care about here). This all leads to Harry (swearing revenge for DiGiorgio) being reinstated and put on the case, but first his asshole captain (Bradford Dillman, a guy who made a very long career playing assholes and playing them well) has a little surprise for him. One of the young recruits whom he had grilled at his administratve post has been promoted from being a desk clerk to being his new partner, and (God forbid) she’s a WOMAN at that, played by Tyne Daly (not long before she played a woman cop on TV in Cagney and Lacey). Harry is (obviously) disgusted, especially at all the lip service we hear being given as to how this will promote diversity and equal rights within the department and thus implying strongly and uncomfortably that Harry’s superiors know that she is less than qualified but promoted her anyway due to her gender. But at least her and Eastwood have an immediate chemistry that keeps their scenes together watchable with the rightful decision being made to forego any romantic involvement between the two of them that had been in the original script. And off they go in search of the mad bomber hippies and looking for any leads they can, including chasing down a possible suspect in one of the longest, most drawn out foot chase scenes in movie history, a visit to a black militant played by another series regular in Albert Popwell (who had played a different role in each of the first three movies) that at least exhibits the best writing and acting in the film, another visit to a cheap looking brothel where Harry actually roughs up one of the hookers before kicking the shit out of her pimp, and finally a mouthy priest of all people whom it turns out had been aiding and abetting the group all along. Turns out that the leader of the hippies is actually an unstable Vietnam vet played by someone named DeVeren Bookwalter (a guy whose career barely made a blip on the radar screen after this before dying in 1987) who despite being proficient with a knife and having a decently charismatic look to him was by far the worst of the Dirty Harry villains up to that time, a far cry from Andrew Robinson’s giggling yet brilliant psychopath in the original and the platoon of vigilante killer cops in Magnum Force led by Hal Holbrook and David Soul. In fact, besides their tendency to ruthlessly execute nearly everyone whom they come into contact with, the one thing that sets this group apart is in just how mindboggingly inept that they come across as with it being even harder to tell if that is because it was the intention of the screenwriters or if it was just in the way that the actors playing the hippies played their roles especially when one of them pulls out a taser to use as a weapon and goodnaturedly remarks, “Wow, this looks like the kind of thing that you would see in a James Bond movie.” (really?). Turns out that while they are busy dropping notes making some rather random ransom demands that don’t ever seem to get taken all that seriously, their real goal is an elaborate kidnapping of San Francisco’s Mayor (still patting himself on the back for promoting a woman to Police Inspector) and holding HIM for ransom all the way out on Alcatraz Island which Harry and his girl partner must now infiltrate (but not as official law enforcement agents, since Harry has since been put on suspension). But through it all, there’s no real insight, no actual substance, just the sight of Harry gritting it out amusingly at dealing with a woman trying to enter his man’s world. At its core it IS fun to watch for those kind of character bits, but when the bad guys don’t even seem to come across as even remotely threatening or dangerous (save for when its obvious psycho leader who is reduced to panicking like a little girl at the film’s climax uses his very large knife to carve up a victim since it seems to be his preference), much of the tension that should be there just evaporates completely and we’re reduced to getting our Harry fix from watching him smack around some random dirtbags usually just to get some information on where to make his next move. Couple that with Harry Guardino coming back from the first film as Callahan’s lieutenant (when he was absent from Magnum Force) and giving a performance that mostly consists of a series of closeups of him wincing whenever Harry says or does something scandalous, and that’s pretty much all we’ve got to work with here as one must realize along with any fan of The Dirty Harry Brand Name that Eastwood would turn this entire franchise into his own personal cash cow form of leverage with the Hollywood establishment, churning out a movie whenever he wanted the studio to fund and allow him to make one of his more personal pet projects, a strategy that worked for him well into the 80s but with the exception of the final film in the series (Dead Pool) enabled him to just phone it in provided that the script was legible and the camera was pointed in just the right direction, leaving all of the power and intelligence of the first two movies far behind in the early 70s from whence they were made. And when some might say that really when the passion has gone out of the character and when the followups to the greatest crime drama ever conceived come across as seeming to have been reduced to the level of a 1980s cop TV show complete with mismatched, bickering partners and bad guys who come across more as being like our resident scumbags of the week rather than truly memorable portrayals of evil, then maybe one should pull the plug if not for the fact that the Dirty Harry character has resonated so strongly (and still does today) with certain people that they would still want to watch him even if he was just teaching ethics courses at the local police academy, all the more reason to shoulder on for better or worse…
5/10