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Dirty Harry (1971) is a compelling neo-noir thriller about San Francisco Police Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood), who is increasingly forced to choose between liberal legal norms and bringing a sadistic serial killer known as Scorpio to justice. Once Harry kills Scorpio, the movie ends with him throwing away his badge, symbolizing a momentous decision. When justice and law conflict, Harry chooses justice.
This is what makes Harry “dirty.” Harry Callahan is not corrupt. He is not willing to dirty his hands with illegality for selfish and petty reasons. But he will go outside the law to secure the higher good. The various events of the movie’s plot beautifully reveal elements of Harry’s character, so that his final choice makes sense.
Dirty Harry belongs in the category of first-rate crime thrillers like The French Connection, L.A. Confidential, To Live and Die in L.A., and Drive.
Director Don Siegel frames Dirty Harry with sweeping Bay Area vistas. Then the camera dives into the action and draws the viewer with it. The script is tightly written and the story swift-paced. Lalo Schifrin’s jazz fusion score marries perfectly with the action and heightens the emotional impact. This being a gritty crime thriller set in swinging San Francisco, there are some racy elements: violence, cussing, nudity, homosexual couples, etc. But Siegel avoids outright obscenity. It is easy to overlook the artfulness of Dirty Harry because the story is so captivating.
The best way to appreciate Dirty Harry is to compare it to its four terrible sequels: Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and The Dead Pool (1988).
Dirty Harry was decried as “fascist” for making a hero of a vigilante cop who was also characterized as a racist, although the movie pulled its punches on this particular matter by making Harry an equal opportunity hater and partnering him with one Chico Gonzalez. But Dirty Harry was also a huge hit, especially among white men. This dictated two things. First, there would be sequels because there would be money in them. Second, the sequels would subvert everything that Leftists found “problematic” about Harry Callahan.
This would dictate that the sequels could not build on the evolution of Harry’s character in the original movie, because that was the biggest problem of all. So instead, they just reduced Dirty Harry to a formula and repeated it four times. Each Dirty Harry sequel required: Clint Eastwood, a big gun, some shootouts with hoodlums, some California degeneracy, a clever line he repeats from time to time, and a jazz fusion score, preferably by Lalo Schifrin.
Since Harry is racist and presumably sexist, they have to pair him with a non-white or female partner. Since Dirty Harry was very much a guy movie, they also tarted up the sequels with some romance.
Since the formulaic repetition of tropes without any character development gets boring fast, these movies feel hollow and meaningless. Thus the filmmakers punched them up with fist-fights and car chases and made the sex and violence extra lurid. Dirty Harry had dashes of Playboy. The sequels in the sleazy Seventies were pure Hustler.
The first sequel, Magnum Force, is the worst. With a script by the allegedly “based” John Milius, Magnum Force is less a sequel than a hard reboot of Dirty Harry. At the end of Dirty Harry, Callahan looks like he is quitting the police force and going rogue. In Magnum Force, Callahan is back on the force as if nothing has happened. Moreover, as a large number of criminals start getting gunned down, Callahan suspects that the culprit is actually a rogue cop gone vigilante. Our new Squeaky-Clean Harry is determined to bring him to justice.
It turns out that the culprits are four good-looking white motorcycle cops played by David Soul, Robert Urich, Tim Matheson, and Kip Niven. Of course the “real” Harry Callahan would have been mentoring young men like this, not trying to arrest them. But instead Harry has a black partner, complete with ’fro, named Early. Naming a black man “Early” sounds like a racist joke to me, but surely that was not Milius’ intention.
It turns out that the young vigilantes are mentored by Lt. Neil Briggs, played by Hal Holbrook, a pencil-necked prig who spends a lot of time chewing out Callahan for being trigger-happy. When Briggs finally reveals himself to Callahan, our Squeaky-Clean Harry argues (1) that vigilantism is a slippery slope that will lead to shooting people over parking tickets, which is absurd, and (2) that the system may be broken, but it is the only one we’ve got, and we can’t let go of it, which is Republican. At this point, Milius has completely destroyed the hero of Dirty Harry. And it was premeditated.
It would take a free-standing essay to detail all the ways Magnum Force is lame, tasteless, and subversive. But life is too short for that, so here are a few highlights.
Magnum Force was directed by Ted Post. I didn’t need to visit Wikipedia to know that he made his career in television. Despite being shot on location in and around America’s most scenic city, Magnum Force looks and feels like television: scrunched shots, dull camera work, sclerotic pacing. Not even Lalo Schifrin’s excellent score—the only first-rate thing about this movie—can breathe life into Post’s directing.
The acting is all TV-grade as well. The only thing that would keep this movie off TV is its extremely lurid treatment of sex and violence.
In good dramatic conflict, the outcome is determined by the characters of the antagonists. Action is revelatory of character. Events have a deeper meaning. But during the climactic battle with the vigilantes in Magnum Force, one of them . . . dies in an accident.
The allegedly clever line that Harry repeats is, “A man’s got to know his limitations,” which is a far cry from, “Do you feel lucky?” and completes Milius’ transformation of the hero of Dirty Harry into a smug old fart.
Three years later, Dirty Harry returns in The Enforcer. A mostly white group of hippy criminals has stolen military weapons and explosives from what is apparently a private warehouse guarded by a single geezer. They style themselves People’s Revolutionary Strike Force and try to extort money from the city by planting bombs and kidnapping the mayor.
Harry is paired with a female rookie (Tyne Daly), because the mayor wants to court feminists and good press. She tries hard to be a good cop. She also tries to seduce Harry. But her lack of experience gets her killed while rescuing the mayor. Thus The Enforcer actually amounts to a powerful critique of affirmative action and the political flakes who push it. Too bad it isn’t a better movie.
The Enforcer is directed by James Fargo, who like Ted Post captures the Bay Area’s spectacular scenery, as well as lurid sex and bloody violence, with all the cinematic sweep and dynamism of an episode of The Golden Girls. Harry’s pursuit of the criminals takes him to a whorehouse and onto the set of a porno movie. The killings are extra bloody and lurid. There are plenty of chases to a very routine jazz fusion score by Jerry Fielding.
But none of it has any higher meaning. There is no character development, just repetition of the formula: Harry mows down bad guys with his big gun, gets heat from the brass, and mutters the word “marvelous” occasionally, because that’s this script’s idea of wit.
Aside from Eastwood, the acting is barely serviceable for television. When Tyne Daly flirts with Harry—“Isn’t Coit Tower phallic?” “Ooh what a big gun you have.” “Do you use a .44 magnum for penetration?”—the acting is barely serviceable for porn.
Eastwood himself directed Sudden Impact, his fourth outing as Dirty Harry. Sudden Impact the best of the sequels and a huge box-office smash. It has the best one-liner of all: “Go ahead, make my day.” But this film is mediocre at best.
Eastwood’s girlfriend Sondra Locke plays Jennifer, the victim of a gang rape who decides to hunt down and kill her assailants ten years later. She kills her first victim in San Francisco, which puts Callahan on the case. Jennifer then leaves for the fictional town of San Paulo (filmed in Santa Cruz), where the rest of her assailants live. Callahan, meanwhile, gets in some heat with the brass and is forced to take a vacation. He just so happens to go to San Paulo, where he gets involved with Jennifer and notices a pattern when new bodies start turning up.
Mick, the most dangerous of Jennifer’s targets, turns the tables and attacks her, using her gun to kill the local police chief. Harry kills Mick and rescues Jennifer. Harry suspects that Jennifer is the real killer, but since Mick has the murder weapon on him, Harry pins the other murders on him and lets Jennifer walk away. It is a bizarre ending. It is not really an endorsement of vigilantism, however, because Harry doesn’t actually know why Jennifer is killing these people. It is just a bizarre lapse of responsibility.
Unlike the other sequels, however, Sudden Impact at least had the potential to be a good movie. All it needed was a better script, better actors, and better directing. It is certainly Eastwood’s weakest work as a director. Locke’s character is almost as bland as her comatose sister. The villains are ridiculous, cackling caricatures. The acting is TV-grade.
The plot is filled with dumb, disconnected events with no larger meaning. For instance, as in Magnum Force, when some of Harry’s enemies attack him, they die . . . accidentally.
As Harry practices shooting, a black man with a gun creeps up behind him. The actor is Albert Popwell, who played different characters in the previous Dirty Harry movies. We worry that he is about to shoot Harry, but no, the stalker is one of Harry’s police colleagues. The whole scene is pointless manipulation.
Beyond that, the character is completely useless. Aside from fake stalking Harry, he gives Harry another useless character, an ugly bulldog that farts and pisses to take up screen time. Then he shows up later to be killed by racists. His existence is simply dictated by the movie’s formula. But since Harry is on vacation for most of the film, he can’t be paired with a female or non-white partner, so Popwell’s character can’t really be integrated into the drama.
There’s little to be said about the final Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool. The movie is purely by the numbers. This time the brass decide it would be good for the department’s image to partner Harry with a Chinese-American cop, Quan (Evan Kim), who knows kung fu. The Dead Pool features the world’s most ridiculous car chase, in which Harry screeches and lurches through the hills of San Francisco pursued by a toy car. Harry’s clever line is, “You’re shit out of luck,” which is how I felt watching this turkey.
Eastwood was 58 in 1988 when The Dead Pool was released, so he decided it would be the last Dirty Harry movie. Having made more than $30 million from Sudden Impact, Eastwood decided to cut some of his friends in on the payday. The director of The Dead Pool is Eastwood’s stunt double, Buddy Van Horn. The story was thought up by two goofy libertarian pill and smoothie merchants, Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw. It’s everything you’d expect from such a brain trust. Given the cynicism of this exercise, it was a clever deflection to make the putative villain an even more cynical director of slasher films, Peter Swan (Liam Neeson).
This being the Eighties, the Hustler magazine sleaze of the Seventies sequels is gone from Sudden Impact and The Dead Pool. Lalo Schifrin returns to write the scores, but this being the Eighties, we hear drum machines, funky basslines, and insipid melodies.
As for the message of The Dead Pool, there’s not much left of the old Dirty Harry to deconstruct, but I do note that he is now respectable. He’s made the cover of San Francisco magazine, which he indignantly trashes. You see, Harry’s primary conflict with the brass is no longer about trampling on the rights of criminals but about cooperating with the press. In the course of the film, however, Harry learns that reporters are not all bad. In the end, he even saves one from a serial killer. Since the press is the ultimate enforcer of liberal norms throughout the whole series, if you are looking for an anti-establishment hero here, you’re shit out of luck.
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Dirty Harry and Death Wish have more in common than just being “right wing movies.” “Dirty Harry” and the original “Death Wish” were not great movies, but they were entertaining, but the sequels each of these movies spawned were “terrible.” The “Dirty Harry” sequels were at least watchable but the “Death Wish” sequels I couldn’t even make it through an entire movie. $equels of great movies always end up being trash.
All that I really remember of the Dirty Harry sequels was: (1) Harry one-handing his S&W Model 29 in the combat shooting match; and (2) how totally unattractive Tyne Daly was even then. I skipped the last two and from this review, I don’t think I missed much.
There’s a crucial point about this movie that needs to be made. The despicable villain, who’s so viscerally loathsome that he’s got a little girl buried alive, gets caught by Harry in the climactic stadium scene, centerpiece of the film’s emotional manipulation. He squeals in contemptible sissy terror before his cathartic torture and punishment.
What does he say?
“I have ri-ightss!!!!”
Why?
Dirty Harry was made after adoption of the ICCPR but before it came into force. By the release date, a number of pesky countries had ratified it – the likes of Syria, Libya, Uruguay, Bulgaria, Colombia, Cyprus, Yugoslavia. That made it hard to vilify them as dictatorships, since the ICCPR beats hell out of the toothless US bill of rights. The whole world was enacting civil and political rights into law. If this kept up, the US subject population would eventually hear about this movement and learn what real rights are like and say, I want those.
The film does not exactly counterpose justice and law. It counterposes the good guy’s arbitrary actions and the bad guy’s rights. It’s not an accident that the climax involves torture. Actual events at the start of the 70s (as opposed to the news from Wisner’s Wurlitzer) were dominated by international outrage at US torture in Latin America. The ICCPR was the first of a series of instruments culminating in the Convention Against Torture. The “ticking bomb” scenario is actually a deracinated version of the terrified gasping little girl buried alive scenario, and it is derived from French propaganda against Algerian independence.
So this is not exactly a right-wing movie. It’s a movie made for and by what Kiriakou would call CIA ultras.
But part III is gloriously terrible.
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I saw maybe 20% of SUDDEN IMPACT but this scene is a riot.
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So this guy
is Albert Popwell. I always thought he was Thalmus Rasulala.
Who can tell them apart?
My favorite Clint Eastwood/Sondra Locke movie is The Gauntlet.
Clint has to transport witness Locke from Las Vegas to Phoenix to appear in court.
The mob and corrupt cops have other ideas.
Las Vegas has betting odds that she won’t make it.
All I remember from The Dead Pool is that it featured a then-unknown Jim Carrey as a hair metal rock star, badly lip-syncing “Welcome to the Jungle”.
Sequels are usually terrible. Still, DIRTY HARRY sequels weren’t as disgraceful as ROCKY and RAMBO sequels, among many others.
Sequels can be interesting IF a singular director has other ideas with the material. No wonder FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE and THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY are even better than the first A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS. Such sequels are unified by an ‘auteur’ vision.
Sequels can work if the material is formulaic to begin with. The success of 007 and Zatoichi films owes to this. The fan base just want the same new same new. It’s like ordering from the same pizzeria over and over.
Sequels are justified when the original movie is incomplete or open to further development, as with THE GODFATHER PART 2. As Part 1 was about the rise of Michael Corleone, part 2 could be about his consolidation of power. And there was more in the family dynamics, as well as the story of origins, how Vito came to America and why he turned to crime.
Though George Lucas ultimately botched STAR WARS, the sequels made sense given his original conception. Still, it was meant to be a closed system, like the Ring Cycle, than open-ended, which is why the Disney Reboot was such a terrible idea driven only by money(and stupid ideology). STAR TREK was conceived as a open system for TV and could go on and on. STAR WARS was meant to work like a fairy tale, with ‘Once Upon a Time’ opening and ‘Happily Ever After’ ending.
Another way sequels can be interesting if if the material is open to new interpretations and variations. This is true of the ALIEN franchise. No doubt first-rate talents were involved to give the material their own spins.
Unfortunately, the only rationale for sequels is More Money(like with JAWS and HALLOWEEN). Generally, the director of the remarkable original isn’t interested IF he has any integrity. He did the first movie because he believed in it and doesn’t want to whore himself out and cheapen the material. So, sequels usually end up with second-raters. Also, the power of certain movies owes to its urgency & topicality. DIRTY HARRY was the right(ist) movie for the right time. Later, it just became a nostalgia act.
DIRTY HARRY should have been a stand-alone movie. It ended like HIGH NOON, and who’d want a sequel to HIGH NOON? Sequels followed THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, bad idea.
Some stories say everything that needs to be said and MORE would simply be irrelevant and irritating. This was true of ROCKY where the local palooka loses the fight but earns self-respect. Anything more would spoil the magic of the first one. (Sadly, the audience didn’t agree and kept rewarding Stallone for Rocky sequels while neglecting his attempts to do something different.)
DIRTY HARRY also has nothing more to say as it ended. Harry Callahan’s flinging the badge has double meaning. The system isn’t capable of dealing with criminals, and he wants nothing more to do with it. But, there’s also a sense that his way is also unacceptable. It isn’t the Wild West anymore, and if every cop could just go around with a Magnum and blow away bad guys out of personal vendetta, cops would be the new criminal class. So, Callahan is caught between a rock and hard place. The system is too soft, but then, he doesn’t want to be a supercop who takes the law into his own hands. He did it against Scorpio whom he especially came to loathe, but it’s all so insane. So, unwilling to serve a weak system and unwilling to be a monster, he walks away. It is a tragic happy ending. The killer is dead, but Callahan can’t take it anymore.
There is an integrity in what he does, but it vanishes with the sequels because he’s back doing the same thing. Also, the sequel undermine the social critique of the original. If indeed the system cannot tolerate a man like Callahan, why does he remain on the job even as he piles up body counts in ever more spectacular ways? Hmm, maybe the system can use a man like Harry. In the original, we shared Callahan’s frustration when the system obstructed his actions, but in the sequels, the System vs Callahan is just a wink-wink horseplay where he’s reprimanded but always chosen as the right man for the job. Also, whereas Callahan was an individual in the first film, he’s an institution in the sequels. It’s like Godzilla was a terrifying monster in the first movie but a beloved national symbol in the sequels.
There are ‘racists’ and then there are ‘racists’. People love the soft bigot for three reasons: (1) Due to lack of PC, he might blurt out the inconvenient truth(and Mike Royko the famous Chicago columnist often played on this) (2) bigotry is often funny, e.g. Dumb Polack Jokes and Jewish Jokes (3) there is the chance for redemption, like when the Negro in PHILADELPHIA comes to feel for the homo dying of AIDS. (And of course, Oscar Schindler goes from a war profiteer who dallies with Nazi stalwarts to a savior of Jews. Apparently, soft bigots can be turned, and this Damascus Moment is inspiring.)
People don’t like hard bigots like the KKK guy on Howard Stern Show. They are too deemed too grim and extreme.
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But soft bigots like Archie Bunker, George Jefferson, and Fred G. Sanford were always funny, even endearing. Also, despite their bigotry, they had a heart and, when push came to shove, could be expected to be good. And sometimes, Archie Bunker was closer to the truth than overly idealistic and naive Meathead. Dirty Harry was a soft bigot, a role Eastwood reprised in GRAN TORINO.
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No, it looks like he’s calling it quits for good. There’s no indication that he’s going rogue. He’s just walking away. System is soft, thugs are brazen, and he’s sick & tired. He’s not planning to be Judge Dredd.
No, Callahan would never have mentored them to be vigilantes. He is above all an individual, something of a loner. He did it his way in DIRTY HARRY because HE felt it was right. He resents having his decisions(based on experience) blocked by some paper pusher, but neither does he want to be the ringleader who forces his agenda on others. Callahan is a case of pulp existentialism. He doesn’t claim to know the truth or the way. Rather, based on experience and intuition, he believes his way is best for himself. But he doesn’t believe his way should be The Way for the system or for others. Pauline Kael mentioned Ayn Rand in her review of DIRTY HARRY, and there is indeed something similar between Harry Callahan and Howard Roark. Roark believes his way is right for him. He doesn’t want to be told what to do, but then, he would never tell others to do it his way. Everyone has to know himself and find his own right way.
The scenario of MAGNUM FORCE is a dark mirroring of the system in the original. Whether too-soft-and-liberal or too-authoritarian-and-hardline, both systems are about some paper-pushing bureaucrat turning theory into practice with automatons who only know how to follow orders. So, if cops in DIRTY HARRY are expected to mindlessly follow the ‘liberal’ line, the cops in MAGNUM FORCE follow authoritarian dictates. Callahan sees both ways as mindless and faceless, an abandonment of individuality in total submission to the system.
Also, if the evil mastermind in MAGNUM FORCE is secretly building up a new police corp., he isn’t really going rogue but crypto-statist. And who knows how this power may be used in the future if it becomes the new way? After all, conservatives assumed that the US military and US police are bastions of conservatism, but the US military is now the warring force of globo-homo and miscegenation. And US police stand idly by while Antifa thugs attack American patriots and move into action to arrest the patriots who dare to fight back.
So, in a way, the concerns raised by MAGNUM FORCE are relevant. While the Holbrook character may be building up a new authoritarian police force to fight crime, once instituted who is to tell how the power will be used? After 9/11, we were told the Patriot Act was to defend us from terrorists, but under Obama the US was working with Alqaeda, and worse, we are now told that half the nation are potential ‘domestic terrorists’.
Now, the libby-dibs wanna go ‘rogue’ with the Constitution and are cheering suppression of free speech by invoking ‘hate speech’ and thought criminals. Supposedly, we are so evil that lawyers and journalists must stop upholding principles and use whatever means to shut us down.
And according to TIME mag, it was noble for a cabal of Jewish oligarchs and elites to use extra-legal means to rig the election in favor of Biden because Trump is unfit for their idea of ‘democracy’.
Whether it’s called going rogue or going gangster, it can be turned against you… like Germany’s use of poison gas in WWI. When the wind shifted, the gas came right back.
Harry’s argument isn’t really about vigilantism per se. Brigg(Holbrook) isn’t just an angry official lashing out at thugs and crooks in a city going down the sewer. He’s trying to institutionalize what is considered ‘vigilantism’ into a new system of law and order. He’s trying to create a deep state within the police system. But if such power becomes reality, there’s no guarantee it will be used only to fight thugs and criminals. It can be politicized. Vigilantes tend to be individuals than institutions. 60s radicals of the Long March through the institutions proved that what was once ‘radical’ and ‘seditious’ could become the New Normal and Obligatory Officialdom.
Over the years, the militarization of the police has taken place. Also, Charlottesville taught us about how the system can use an authoritarian police force to violate the rights of free speech and free assembly. The police didn’t stand by the Constitution but took orders from Jewish and black bosses to use magnum force against the Alt Rightists, pushing them into crowds of Antifa and other scum.
The current order of lawfare and militarized police force don’t shoot people for parking tickets, but James Field in sitting in jail for 500 yrs for what was, at most, manslaughter.
In our time, the question isn’t “Is the legal system too soft?” or “Is the legal system too tough?” but “Why is the legal system so soft on some people, esp. Jews, homos, & blacks, while so tough on others, especially white conservatives, populists, and nationalists?” If you’re a Jewish gangster who stole billions and support Zionist terrorism, you get pardoned and walk freely. But if you’re a white patriot, the banks deny you service, you get fired, and you can be dragged to prison for fighting back against Antifa.
Ted Post was a decent journeyman director who worked with big stars.
https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/hang-em-high/Film?oid=1053493
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/movies/ted-post-director-for-film-and-television-dies-at-95.html
On its release in 1978, “Go Tell the Spartans” received respectful reviews in major newspapers and a few raves. Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic called it “the best film I’ve seen about the Vietnam War.” But appearing in theaters at virtually the same time as the better-financed and better-publicized Vietnam films “Coming Home” and “The Deer Hunter,” it failed at the box office.
“Spartans” began receiving a second look when the influential film quarterly Cineaste published an article in 1983 comparing it favorably to “The Deer Hunter,” “Coming Home” and Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 epic, “Apocalypse Now.” The article, by the film historian Rob Edelman, helped spur the movie’s re-release in 1987.
Upon the re-release, the film historian Burt Cadullo wrote, “It’s time that this film received the recognition it deserves,” but “Spartans” still performed poorly in theaters.
Most Dirty Harry lines mean little on their own. They have meaning within timing and context; they work like jokes, and the final line in MAGNUM FORCE does work in terms of timing and delivery. It’s like Blondie’s line THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY.
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It’s why some of the most famous movie lines are actually pretty dull or lame minus the context, like song lyrics without the music. Take the line “I’ll be back” in THE TERMINATOR. On its own, it’s hardly Shakespeare, but in that scene where the killer robot crashes the car through the station and lumbers down the hall with rifles, it’s classic.
Lines in a play must rely on the power of words alone, whereas words in movies often serve as mere counterpoint to the spectacle. Like John Wayne’s “That’ll be the day” that, on its own, is pretty useless.
This is simply not true and you’re projecting your ideological bias onto the scene. The movie shows her to be quite capable, a fast learner. Also, her death isn’t the result of lack of experience(and if it were, it could be remedied with MORE experience) but risking her own life to save Harry’s. When she yelled, “Look out”, Callahan’s back was turned to the killer who could have blown him away. Her warning saved his life, and she took the bullets meant for him. Thus, it is Callahan who owes her one. Also, she’s professional enough to tell Callahan to go save the mayor than concern himself with her. So, she dies with honor.
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How could Callahan not know when she spelled it all out?
“Read me my rights? And where was all this concern for my rights when I was being beaten and mauled? And where were my sister’s rights when she was being brutalized? There is a thing called justice Callahan, and is it justice that they should all just walk away?”
Sudden Impact starts off well but when Sondra Locke appears its like another (bad) movie. Guess the moral is don’t put your girlfriend in your own movie especially if you are the director. There was a clever line from I believe The Enforcer where Callahan warns a criminal “You’re not going to believe what happens next even while its happening to you”. A bit longer than “Make My Day” but a lot more menacing.
So you think it’s ok for cops to turn vigilante and execute criminal suspects? As I recall the criminals were not murderers in Magnum Force. The best line in movie was. ‘All our heroes are dead”, said by the vigilante cops. That had a post 1960’s resonance. In Brazil, the cops are known for shooting street people. The last I heard about them was in the Brazil Olympics, they kidnapped an Olympic New Zealand official and made him withdraw his money from an ATM. Dirty Harry for all his flaws might have meant that.
The criminals in Magnum Force were murderers. The cops also shot their girlfriends.
The problem with DIRTY HARRY movies and other such is that they assume the guns are the solutions. Sure, violence or threat of violence is at the foundation of any society.
Still, a more effective tool is the power of language. Megaphone 44 beats Magnum 44.
After all, so much of the current problem is the result of lies. Jews and Uberalls monopolize the pen & phone while conzos cling to their guns. But guns are silent except in emergency situations. In contrast, people are always talking.
So, a more effective movie might have been where Harry is a lawyer or a journalist than a man with a gun.
Speak the truth on race and crime. Speak the truth on Jewish Power.
Harry Callahan as Don Rickles.
I preferred Clint Eastwood in Westerns over Clint the Inspector or Detective. I liked Eastwood in “Tightrope” which is not bad and certainly better than the Dirty Harry sequels. Yes, those “Rocky” and “Rambo” sequels are awful. Next to the Spaghetti Western Trilogy, my next favorite Eastwood flick is The Outlaw Josey Wales. Of course it is one of those movies that play all the time on t.v. Odds are you can find “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” “Braveheart,” “Shawshank Redemption” or a Hitler documentary on t.v. at any given time. They have looped those movies to death.
It seems there was a PBS doc on Eastwood.
Here’s a piece by Dave Kehr.
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/clint-eastwood-eastwood-noir/582/
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/clint-eastwood-interview-director-bruce-ricker-writer-david-kehr/584/
Dirty Harry and Death Wish were huge in Japan, as were their sequels. Eastwood and Bronson became sex symbols in Japan. The Japanese really loved the imagery of tough, justice-obsessed white guys blasting away criminals in the degenerate, crime-filled American cities. Perhaps the only bigger foreign star in Japan at that time was Roger Moore, who’s Bond movies were massive there and to this day many Japanese cite Moore, not Connery, as their favorite Bond.
‘I gots ta know.’
You forgot to mention that he roots his attractive young Asian neighbour in Magnum Force.
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And when in The Enforcer he’s not going along to get along with the mayor’s new ‘equity’ policies, he is able to talk to a bunch of small fry for long enough to win a hearing from Big Ed Mustapha himself.
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Big Ed Mustapha! It’s not so long since you guys had a Big Ed Mustapha in the White House! For two terms!
Don’t be too hard on these films. In some ways, they were tremendously prescient. What is happening now, has deep roots in America’s civic culture. We’re just seeing the flowering of seeds planted long ago.
And this line, from Sudden Impact, perfectly sums up the psychosis which grips the SJWs, cultural marxists, critical race theorists, et hoc genus omnes, who are currently making merry havoc as the instruments of those who thrive in chaos and disintegration:
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You see Trevor, the films aren’t all bad.
My opinion that Outlaw Josey Wales may be the best movie ever. There’s enough character development that you care about a few of them, the cinematography is gorgeous, and the dialog concise.
The line is from “Coogan’s Bluff” (1968), Eastwood’s rehearsal for the Dirty Harry character.
Video Link
I am of two minds about this. I absolutely agree, and I also think vigilantes are necessary in a corrupt, bureaucratic system that pays lip-service to the concept of rights when convenient, and does not when it doesn’t (how concerned is the system with the rights of the non-favored?) So, most cops are abusive, politically-reliable tools of the state. Dirty Harry still needs to whack the serial killers, badge or not.
Thanks. I just don’t see Coogan’s Bluff on TV anymore. A pity because it is a better movie than the ‘Dirty Harry’ sequels. It was a full on Dirty Harry prequel. That line ‘you won’t believe what happens next’ was much better than ‘Do you feel lucky’ or ‘Make my day’. Another great scene was Eastwood arriving in New York to a shabby hotel room and being accosted by a prostitute. She lifts his wallet from his trousers and when caught she snarls ‘What are you? Some sort of religious fanatic’ as he throws her out the door.
Boomthorkell, I would only add, funny thing about those serial killers,
https://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Dave%20McGowan%20-%20Programmed%20to%20Kill.pdf
The serial killers Dirty Harry is scaring us with turn out to be grown & harvested by… CIA too. As a domestic strategy of tension justifying continual increases in repression (as we see above, lawless vigilante Harry winds up back on the force, because torture and extrajudicial killing are Okey-dokey after all.) There appear to be two types of serial killers with different functions: some are induced to carry out extrajudicial killings and get caught, and others kill a bunch of people, diverting attention from an especially touchy extrajudicial killing hidden among the victims.
I loved both “Outlaw Josey Wales” and the movie, “Jeremiah Johnson” but both movies have been on (((television))) endless times and I have almost memorized all the lines in each movie. haha. I always wonder why it seems that (((television))) plays the same movies over and over. The Rocky movies were brought up, that series and The Godfather series are yet more movies that play over and over and over on the t.v.
I saw a movie recently that I had never even heard of called, “The Incident” which I recommended as a “right wing movie.” This IMO was an excellent movie and it never plays on television, except for the time I was lucky enuff to catch it while channel surfing. Lots of movies to choose from and we see the same crap over and over. “Dances With Wolves” is another one that they play over and over.
But the crucial difference is the lack of ambiguity and the aura of invincibility in Harry Callahan. For all his questionable means, Callahan is always the good guy and always right. Even when he comes close to be killed, he always makes it out alive and comes out on top. And he’s always righteous. Even when he is ‘dirty’, it’s for the higher/common good. He serves and protects. He’s an honorable guy. His gun always hit the target and never commits the grave error of killing another cop or a civilian.
In contrast, both leads in William Friedkin movies reek of nihilism and are far from infallible. This is especially true of William Peterson’s character in TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. His vendetta goes from righteous to personal to egotistical to reckless to nihilistic to mad. It all becomes like a cocaine high. He becomes an addict. And his cocksure attitude leads him to one mistake after another, even the death of an FBI agent. Truly one of the great movies of the decade. In this, the guy in LA does have something in common with the villain, which cannot be said of Callahan and the villains.
Antifa probably believe they are into necessary ‘vigilante’ justice against ‘nazis’. And when Jews said, ‘Punch a Nazi’ or make TV shows about the Mitzvah, they are saying Jews and others should have a free hand to go after ‘nazis’.
Of course, such isn’t usually characterized as ‘vigilante’, but then lynchings done by blacks and radical leftists aren’t called ‘lynching’. It’s a ‘lynching’ only when whites do it to blacks and etc, just like Jewish and black hate is never ‘hate’, which is reserved only for whites.
One difference between the extra-legal violence of the ‘left’ vs the extra-legal violence of the ‘right’ is the former tends to be righteous, pro-active, collective, and crusading. They march together to smoke out the villains and heretics to burn at the stake. “Let’s round up the nazis and punch them.”
So, even when ‘nazis’ are minding their own business or acting peacefully, they are targeted for violence. This kind of violence comes to your door, like when Antifa goons attacked Tucker Carlson’s house.
In contrast, extra-legal violence of the ‘right’ is usually defensive, reactive, and morally apologetic. The last resort. It is activated only when the rowdies and thugs come to your door. Only then are you willing to fight back. It hunkers down and hides from the world and takes up violence. It is morally apologetic because its only rationale for violence is, “I had to use violence to save my life.” So, it concedes that it may be on the wrong side of history. It lacks the confidence to take to the streets and attack the enemies by going up to their doors and banging on them. Rather, it just wants to be left alone or save oneself from the mob. It has a turtle mentality. It has the mentality of warthogs hiding in the den from lions.
‘Right-wing’ vigilantism is warthog mentality. ‘Leftwing’ Crusaderism is lion mentality. It’s between defensive prey mentality and offensive predator mentality. Both are extra-legal, but one wages war with moral pride while the other hunkers down with fear for life and limb. No wonder lion pack is called a pride.
Why is it like this? It’s because the Jews and the ‘left’ control the megaphone to win over hearts and minds. So, their side feels righteous and justified in its rage and hatred. In contrast, the mute or muted whites and the ‘right’ feel accused and judged because they don’t speak and make their case. So, they lack moral confidence and just run and hide… and resort to vigilante violence when things get so bad that it becomes unbearable.
This is why the real battle has to be won with words to win hearts and minds so that whites and the true right and true white left(the national socialists) will have the moral courage and confidence to take to the streets, march together, bang on doors of the enemies and drag them out like warthogs for the slaughter. That will be glorious. Whites must go from vigilante violence to crusader violence. They must learn to growl like lions than squeal like pigs.
Very surprisingly, Stallone’s sixth and last Rocky movie, “Balboa”, filmed more than 25 years after the poor Rocky V, was a plain old good movie:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0479143/
ROCKY V was sort of in that vein also. BALBOA is decent but you can’t go home again after the cartoon-fests of III and IV.
Small bit of trivia that I hope is entertaining, and will provide an opportunity to rethink the ‘car chase’ scene in ‘The Dead Pool’. The Liam Neeson character, director “Peter Swan” is a send-up of Peter Yates, the director of Steve McQueen’s ‘Bullitt.’ The model car was a Mustang GT just like Frank Bullitt’s car. And the chase route involved many of the shot-for-shot tense maneuvers, especially down Lombard Street.
Clint Eastwood has never claimed to be a great artist, and in fact says “I make pictures that tell stories.” He incorporates that line into “Bridges of Madison County” which he also directed (and cast Meryl Streep in ‘brownface’).
I’m a completist, seen every one and for a young man sitting in a theater after work, wondering about his place in the world and surrounded by the senselessness in the world, his pictures were a great way to see a strong male impose justice. He made those films for guys like me, not trying to change anyone’s mind, and I’m grateful and still love him and his stories.
Perhaps the movie “Harry Brown” of 2009 is a more proper sequel, 40 years after.
Yeah, but UNFORGIVEN was too heavy and ‘significant’.
Also, when the prostitute asks him to zip her dress . . .
Coogan : “Up or down?”
Hooker : “Well, let’s put it this way, sport: you’re drivin’.”
I agree that “Coogan’s Bluff” bears repeated viewings, unlike the Dirty films. It has some snappy dialogue and a top villain in Ringerman.
Fun fact : Albert Popwell, the one who kept saying ‘Charlie’ and receives the ‘you won’t believe’ line in the clip, was also in the first four of the five Dirty Harry films, even being at the receiving end of Eastwood’s iconic “Do you feel lucky?” monologue in “Dirty Harry”!
Also, the script of “Coogan’s Bluff” had inspired the creation of McCloud. Interesting to note then both “Coogan’s Bluff” and McCloud are known in French as “Un Shérif à New York”.
This youtube has a compilation of every time Dirty Harry fires a gun:
It isn’t bad. One of the scenes is he takes out a bad guy with a fire boat water cannon so that doesn’t really count. One of the other scenes is he takes out a bad guy with an anti-tank rocket which really really counts.
At no point does he blow anybody’s head clean off.
What exactly are the thermodynamics involved when you shoot an automobile with a gun and the automobile explodes in flames?
I’ve definitely seen Death Wish 3. It’s comedy gold!
Who can forget the inimitable Hal Holbrook as Lt. Briggs “Lieutenant Briggs : You’re a good cop, Harry. You had a chance to join my team, but you decided to stick with the system. ”
R.I.P. Hal Holbrook February 17, 1925 – January 23, 2021
Greg… I mean Trevor,
Please review “Hail Caesar!” by the Cohen brothers.
If you haven’t seen it, I’m sure it will resonate. It’s about Hollywood and Herbert Marcuse is one of the characters.
If they insist on being lions let us play the role of cape buffalo.
The higher good.
The sage Eastwood’s best truism: “Opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one.”
The above is not in response to your post, but thought you might like it. Agree with your post and, yes, Ms. Daly is most unappealing. How the heck did she make it into the movies 🙂
The Outlaw Josey Wales… now there is a movie!
Dirty Harry’s path from outcast to mainstream is the same of Rambo. In the first movie he was a Vietnam veteran full of traumas and disorders, and from the second movie on he turned into a ultra-patriotic Reaganist hero.
Profoundly disappointing and effete review by Trevor Lynch-who surprisingly is identified as Greg Johnson of Counter-Currents website. My wife and I who are very well educated, have travelled all our lives and lived in different countries, admire direct action when the machinery of politics and government fail.
One has to remember that all the Founding Fathers affirmed that the government-any government-is only legitimate when it represents the will and consent of the governed. If it does not, and will not yield or abdicate, all prescriptive and concrete actions are endorsed.
These comments reveal the sheep like bromides and condescension of the type of the inert majority of Colonists who did not participate in the American Revolution. Most of the commenters here are useless for relief and release of the tyranny upon us, and more to come.
What a stupid analogy. Anything to hide and deflect from the inductive facts and ineffable conclusions.
Death Wish II was hugely successful in Japan because it was released months after two Japanese honeymooners were killed during a robbery in Los Angeles.
Things I Learned from Death Wish
…No mugger would suspect a scowling tough-looking Slavic former miner with shoulders like a water buffalo walking around at night would be carrying a gun.
…Multi-racial New York & LA street gangs will invariably be led by near-albino Hibernian Irish actors with names like “Nirvana” (Thomas F Duffy) & Fraker (Gavin O’Herlihy) who even have Oirish accents.
…If you’re going to mug somebody the best target is that glowering large guy who looks like a pissed-off Mongol horseman.
…You can shoot someone with an elephant gun in the middle of the street & people will clap.
…The police officer who arrests you will keep calling you “Dude”. Dude, where is my vigilante?
…If you’re married to Jill Ireland & your daughter was kidnapped by five maniacs who left the nude body of your housekeeper in your hall & hit you over the head with a tire iron she’ll say “Oh, Darling, let’s go to bed”.
…Nobody will notice five ragged homeless-looking street thugs in a battered yellow van smoking PCP on the garbage cans outside your residence in an upper middle class neighborhood.
…It’s easy to find the five muggers who attacked you out of 8 million people in Los Angeles.
…The Death Wish albino villains will return for Dirty Harry films (Kevin Major Howard aka Full Metal Jacket’s Rafterman)
…A stranger will be really upset if he hits you in jail & respond by telling him “I’m going to kill a little old lady just for you” right in front of the Sheriff’s deputies.
When Alex Winters is shouting “THEY KILLED THE GIGGLER” his gang leader will reply “THEY HAD NO BUSINESS DOING THAT”
]
…If you’re Danny Trejo & you are discovered by Charles Bronson (DEATH WISH IV, KINJITE) you’ll resemble him as you age.
Things I Learned From Dirty Harry
…If a cop does not read you your rights or searches your blood-bolted pit of a room at your stadium job you can kill 14 year old girls & shoot police officers & be free because you were not Mirandized.
…Cops named Callahan who spend all their free time shooting pool in pubs hate Micks.
…Leaders of police death squad suborganizations will always look like David Soul in case your point about Nazis was overlooked.
…If you are the smalltime Fuher of a death squad of cops instead of shooting Harry dead after he killed 4 of your men & simply blaming him for it as well as the black cop you killed with a bomb it is better to tell him your elaborate plans to prosecute him while he activates the bomb in your car.
…You’ll throw your badge in the water in self-disgust after some completely psychotic sniper lunges for his gun at a gravel pit but after killing a bunch of other police officers you sort of agree with & your own superior you’ll smile & say “good man’s got to know his limitations”.
…The fearsome domestic terrorists of the People’s Revolutionary Strike Force look like a bunch of burned out 70’s porn actors.
…Redoubted season old mafiosos will die in fear if you suggest some call girl wrote their name in her diary.
…It is alright to shoot an unarmed Lesbian simply because she was present at a beach party where you were raped by drunken local punks.
…If you have killed two people upon arrival in a police chief’s town be sure to growl “Aye Aye Sir” after he admonishes you for leaving bodies in the streets.
…When three black armed robbers in a diner have sawed off shotguns pointed at your chest they won’t pull the trigger when you say “Me, Smith & Wesson” & then slowly stick your hand into your jacket to remove your gun.
…After shooting a mafioso in your hotel hallway the management will allow you to continue to stay at their hotel.
…Even when the next day some black cop has his throat slit by racist hick hillbilly psychos in your hotel room.
…The thugs that beat you up & threw you over the pier will say “HOLY SH@T” when you walk towards them with your magnum drawn after you have killed the police chief.
…The businessman that Sandra Locke shot in his garage had a point. He was drunk, he only 20 years old, it took place 10 years earlier.
Oh Priss, that was a tour de force! You lovingly fill my Netflix queue every time!
Sci-fi sequels(aliens, terminator2, empire strikes back) tend to rival the originals for economic reasons as well. First movies have budgetary restrains which greatly limit sci-fi fantasy type films, but a successful first movie can allow the creators vision to be fulfilled better with a better budget.
What normal guy wouldn’t love having a neighbor like the one in Magnum Force?
I thought Rocky V and Balboa were pretty good explorations of how life would play out for a person who had gone through the cartoon highs of Rocky III and IV.
Look for Canceled Culture versions of “Dirty Harry” and “Death Wish.” If I remember right didn’t Bruce Willis do a remake of the original “Death Wish?” Oh yeah, just did a check, it was directed by (((Eli Roth.))) Never seen this flick but one can only imagine how this movie would just be pure shit to watch. Can (((Hollywood))) do anything beyond remakes, remakes of remakes, sequels or comic book movies and canceled culture flicks.
The new Dirty Harry will be a Black dude who goes after “neo-Nazis,” “domestic terrorists” who wear red MAGA hats, etc. Black Dirty Harry will go after a White serial rapist who only rapes Black women. lololol. Yeah, we know White on Black rape is as rare as a cotton patch in Harlem but this is (((Hollywood.)))
Bruce Willis is deemed too White and too old, so the new Paul Kersey will be a Hispanic/Jew mix, think Geraldo Rivera aka Jerry Rivers, but taller- much taller. Geraldo has to stand on his toes to reach 5’9″ but yet fancies his soft ass as some sort of “skreet tough.” The Geraldo-like Paul Kersey will not be in NYC but instead he will work the tough streets of Omaha, Nebraska. Paul instills vigilante style justice in “white bread America.” The Brown Kersey will be mugged while moving into his new suburban Omaha home by a group of beefy White Cornhusker Nebraskan thugs. From there Paul takes to the skreets and shows Middle America what social justice is all about.
I don’t think most audiences, even many critics, are sophisticated enough to detect and appreciate that the Dead Pool chase is a send up of Bullitt.
On top of that, that kind of satire is more tonally appropriate for a film like Loaded Weapon.
Movies are not made for the intelligent few but the ignorant masses. The first Dirty Harry was the usual bunk and proceeded to sequels that require the invention of new words to describe their stupidity. Of course the multitude like to be entertained whatever that means and trash like Nightmare on Elm street come to mind with one idiotic sequel after another.
Cop movies are utter bunk. I remember the 70’s/ 80’s TV shows Simon and Simon. Cagney and Lacey, Big Shamus Little Shamus and on and on. People I worked with would look at this shit from the time they got home until midnight. Studying 2 hours a night for 5 years guarantees a person a trade licence. People would spend 6 hours a night for years looking at this tripe and wonder why they are not promoted above floor sweeper.
The sitcoms were even more tuned into the brain dead. What with the TV police catching the perp in one hour, Marcus Welby and Trapper John curing the patient in an hour and Ironside extracting a confession in the same time plus the Soaps with everyone marrying and divorcing everyone else its no wonder the public seem comatose.
We have descended into the Twilight Zone indeed where intelligence is scorned and idiocy applauded.
Life is really too short to watch this kind of rubbish from Hollywood, where the only thing profound is the $$$ and all the handsome and beautiful gold diggers who come to play in the limelight. Standing a strapping 6’4″, Eastwood had everything but acting ability, but clean editing and good camera work cures all those defects and leaves them on the cutting room floor, making the stars appear to fly.
Olive Sturgiss, Clint Eastwood, Dani Crayne
Universal-International Pictures’ Stardom School, 1954
‘Nothing against Eastwood at all. He even learned to do the Twist:
Early Twist lesson with his wife Maggie in 1962. ‘Needs more hand jive.
With Connie Hines. Now he’s got it! Mr. Ed agrees.
Magnum Force was actually my favorite of the series.
Dirty Harry is a close #2 but has some writing problems.
The main problem is Scorpio. He is depicted as diabolical and yet his methods are crude. His character was supposed to based on the Zodiac Killer but he is bumbling and amateurish by comparison. The writing falls apart in second half as there is no grand plan or motivation. The ending is anticlimatic and oddly placed. A routine gun draw scene by a lake and with a recycled line from the beginning.
Mangum Force is the more philosophical of the series. It asks the question: Why bother with the system at all? Harry feels justified in pushing the edges of the system so why should he take offense to someone that completely bypasses it? The rogue cops in Magnum Force are extreme nihilistic versions of himself. Nietzschean versions of Harry that are no longer encumbered by the system and create their own morality.
I’m not saying that rogue cops are the solution to a corrupt system but it poses problems for fans of Harry who believe his actions are justified based on feelings of right and wrong. If you can work the edges because of your moral feelings then why take offense to someone that ignores the edges for the same reason? The movie is on one level a Dirty Harry movie but also challenges the entire idea of Harry Callahan.
The villains in both Magnum Force and The Enforcer are “Vietnam Veterans.” A staple of many movies and 70s TV cop shows was the Crazy Vietnam Veteran. And almost always white. In Magnum Force, the bad guys are Nazi types. In The Enforcer they are crazy left-wingers.
Why? An evil white Vietnam veteran was a safe, politically correct, villain. Also, most TV writers, directors, producers, etc, were people who didn’t go. Vietnam veterans have been bashed in the popular culture for decades. See Stolen Valor, by B.G. Burkett. And a relatively unknown book, Vietnam at the Movies, by Michael Lee Lanning.
Point well made and well taken.
However, people with a lot to lose are not going to risk what they have for a principle. The ones who do soon find to their dismay that they have sacrificed everything to right a wrong, only to find out that all the rhetoric aside, no one really cares. When they find themselves in a morass, they find that while they were concerned about helping the other guy, the other guy is now not in the least interested in helping them.
Its generally the people most disenfranchised and with nothing to lose who freak out. Criminals and other hooligans join in for the fun and the mayhem. The man who owns nothing, is on welfare or working in a minimum wage job, with no savings and renting a room or squalid apartment really could give a shit one way or the other.
Its a risk reward scenario with every man for himself. As some wags pointed out elsewhere “when truth talks to power words come out, when power talks to truth bullets come out”
In Rocky II we learned that Rocky had a bad eye and that he shouldn’t fight again. Rocky is a fighter that leads with his face and throws punches from his ankles so this is sound advice. Plus Rocky is no longer a young pup, we learned in Rocky that he was 30 years old and had fought over 60 club fights. That takes a toll on a person, not to mention, living in broken down apartment, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and only having chocolate or doughnuts to offer your date Adrian. Bad eye, physical abuse to his body, age, etc., Rocky goes on to make numerous title defenses and absorbs beatings at the hands of Clubber and Drago to reemerge years later as a 60 something year old fighter and takes the title from the champ. Only in (((Tinseltown.)))
I once met some young guy in a bar in Manhattan called, “The White Horse Tavern” who swore to me that he was the guy who threw that orange to Rocky when the Rock was running to “Gonna Fly Now” the movie’s theme song. This guy looked to be about 30ish and this is the mid -80s. After having seen Rocky countless times at this point and knowing the guy who threw the orange was at least 50ish, I bought this clown a drink and said, “no shit, I can see the resemblance.” I should have paid the guy a five for his autograph just for laughs.
Look for Canceled Culture versions of “Dirty Harry” and “Death Wish.” If I remember right didn’t Bruce Willis do a remake of the original “Death Wish?”
Both Dirty Harry and Death Wish had PC plotlines. Great movies but they still danced around the problem of Black crime which is what motivated the public’s desire to see a return to law and justice in the first place.
Violent crime in NYC and SF has been overwhelmingly Black since integration. That is still true in SF even though most of the Blacks have been pushed out via gentrification.
Death Wish might as well fall into cancel culture since it is so ridiculously disconnected from reality for egalitarian reasons. A middle age bald White punk leading a multi-ethnic gang in Brooklyn? Can anyone name a single multi-ethnic punk gang from the 80s?
The whole thing reeks like Con Inc race denial which is a form of egalitarianism. They want to believe that everything is simply a matter of morals. Traditional conservatives view Blacks as victims of immorality imposed on them by secular liberalism. That is why Con Inc types are uncomfortable with accurate depictions of race. So they want to cheer on someone like Bronson blowing away scumbags of all races.
“What normal guy wouldn’t love having a neighbor like the one in Magnum Force?”
She’s an ugly whore who lives downstairs.
What could possibly go wrong?
The villains in both Magnum Force and The Enforcer are “Vietnam Veterans.” A staple of many movies and 70s TV cop shows was the Crazy Vietnam Veteran.
It follows blank slate ideals of moral purity.
People are all born good and only later corrupted. White men are the exception as they can be born bad.
Exposing morally-suspect White men to war means creating killing machines as it unleashes the beast within. Studies that involve homicide and who actually commits them are boring and kind of racist anyways. That’s all just street crime caused by racist White men holding everyone down.
That is the most long winded version of “Let’s you and him fight.” I have seen.
Movies like Dirty Harry (and the sequels) are supposed to be “hard-right” “racist” “fascist” and about “vigilante justice.” But they are just politically correct boomer conservatism complete with the obligatory black best friends, mostly white criminals, multiracial gangs, white-on-black racism and killings (heh), interracial romances, etc. They ultimately support the system they are supposed to be criticizing.
I just saw Magnum Force on TV a few months ago (I had seen it years before). The real “fascists” would have been the cops who were essentially “right wing death squads.” His scene with Hal Holbrook has “Dirty Harry” defending the corrupt “justice” system as “the best we have.”
Death Wish was the same thing – complete with street criminals led by Jeff Goldblum ….
“Deconstruction” does not mean what you think it does.
While BLM was quasi-Leftist endorsed, Trump was not going to back them going into the suburbs or exurbs or rural areas to kill the GOP hicks they really detested.
Also, they knew they would lose that battle.
It is different with Biden. Especially if mobilized the worst aspects of the Left-the gangs, the Cholos, the hippie anarchists. If they could go out to the sticks with air support, they would. If for no other reason than to have their way with white womenz.
The bourgeoise of the US will do the same as South Africa. They’ll leave. Australia isn’t so bad. If you have a million dollars & a skill, they are happy to have you.
It is the poor ignorant rural and exurban hick white proles who will end up trapped.
Just ask the very few white lumpen that were trapped in the inner city.
It was very sad to meet Anoushka. She was a beautiful Polish-American girl from Hamtramck who looked Paulina Porizkova & had haunted eyes. She had been sexually bullied in Detroit schools. Feral hoodrats had raped her. More than once. Her introduction to sex had been at knifepoint. Her parents simply did not leave Detroit in time.
So anyhow, the bourgeois will flee.
Working-class or middle class white males will move to Southeast Asia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_ahead,_make_my_day
“White Hunter, Black Heart” is my favorite Eastwood movie, just behind “High Plains Drifter” that is, based on a novel by Peter Viertel I think, who wrote screen plays for John Huston.
Best line: “If I had always told the truth, Pete, I would now be a cake of soap.”
Boy do Hollywood and the movies suck today.
The criticism of Milius’s story for Magnum Force is way too harsh. I agree that the directing was clunky and that Magnum Force initiated the formulaic approach followed by the rest of the sequels. The idea of a vigilante sub-unit within the police force is a good one. Magnum Force did at least spend 30 seconds indicating parallels to death squads that had previously emerged in countries like Brazil, so I disagree that this was a brainless exercise in making Harry palatable to liberal audiences horrified by his treatment of Scorpio in the first film.
You can blame Ted Post all you want, but we all know that by this point Eastwood had enough clout to call the shots. He could’ve had Post fired just like he did Philip Kaufman early on in the making of The Outlaw Josey Wales. Eastwood, in my view, deserves a larger share of the blame for reducing what could have been a great cop drama to just an above average one. Harry’s absurd takedown of the skyjackers toward the beginning was a lame bit of pandering to news events of the time. This mainly irrelevant scene, even if entertaining, was subsequently reproduced in various guises in the rest of sequels about 15 minutes into each film. Another formula is the racial/gender minority partner angle, but the original film already established that angle (to better effect, though, as Chico served as a foil for introducing Harry’s gruff personality and humor). Lynch also correctly points out that the sequels upped the ante on the sex and violence in an artless and pointless way. Magnum Force featured Suzanne Sommers shaking her boobs, as well as a filthy hedonist mobster getting off on his sex slaves snorting coke. The Enforcer was even worse. We get the blonde honey at the beginning shaking her ass for the unsuspecting power company guys. Then Harry shoots some Asian dude in the balls, making one wonder why they chose to pick on a henchman like him instead of the ringleader who insulted Harry repeatedly. Later there’s the chase that causes an interruption of a porno film shoot, with plenty of skin visible. As if that weren’t enough sex industry titillation, Harry toward the end of the film rousts a “massage parlor” and roughs up a sex doll. Sudden Impact, an awful film centering on the ugly topic of rape revenge that Lynch claims is the best of the sequels, was even worse. Why? Because the one scene that sticks out in my mind is revenge lady shooting another Dirty Harry villain in the crotch, even more sickeningly presented than the one in The Enforcer. Sudden Impact also introduced a new, utterly lame humor element involving a sassy, farting bulldog. The best of the sequels? Give me a break. Magnum Force is easily the best of them. The story is excellent and some of Milius’s dialog is terrific, particularly the scene where the young rogue cops confront Harry with a join-us-or-die proposition. Magnum Force is an excellent idea noticeably diminished by poor execution.
High Plains Drifter is awesome. The first two minutes with the haunting music and the mysterious stranger appearing from seemingly nowhere into the desert mountain foreground was especially brilliant. It was a perfect bridge between Leone’s man with no name (well, Joe) and the ghost of Marshal Jim Duncan (played by the director of Dead Pool, incidentally). This opening shot was a highly effective way to convey the parallels between Leone’s mystery man and Duncan’s vengeful avatar (an almost obligatory gesture) without drawing you too far into memories of Leone’s trilogy, while at the same time conjuring pleasant memories from those very films.
“An evil white Vietnam veteran was a safe, politically correct, villain.”
In the 90’s the safe villain became the white Russian or Eastern European terrorist. The only exception was The Siege, but that potentially good film was marred with its insistence on spotlighting the moral purity of Denzel Washington. At least the white military villain, played by Bruce Willis, was shown to have a conscience early on. Somehow it disappeared by the time the predictably cliched ending rolled around.
I suspect that the Israelis bankrolling action films in the 80s and 90s initially wanted to belch out the propaganda of Israelis=Good and Arabs=Bad (e.g. Delta Force). Later there was a shift to angry non-Jewish white guys being the baddies, with Islamic terrorists nowhere in sight. That changed slightly after 9/11 with mainly forgotten films like United 93.
I admire vigilantes and so does my wife.
Planet Of The Apes has come to pass.
Hard to see how a detective would be mentoring motorcycle cops.
“Harry is paired with a female rookie”
Was she in uniform? A rookie would be in uniform.
“This is true of the Alien franchise.”
I’m bummed Ridley Scott won’t get a chance to finish the prequel trilogy to his original Alien. Prometheus and Alien Covenant have a few minor problems; mostly Prometheus. Alien Covenant, taken on its own, is second only in excellence to the origin film in the SF/horror subgenre. The outstanding element in both films is the artificial human David played by Michael Fassbender. Scott’s third film would’ve centered on David building an alien-hybrid civilization on the planet the crew of the colony ship planned to inhabit before they took their ill-fated detour.
At least those old movies show us how it was once in terms of demographics, physiognomies, fashions, styles and the general look of things and how it will never be again no matter how much some of us nostalgists may wish it to be. Of course it was mostly fantasy but superimposed on a reality which still comes through. I now watch almost exclusively old movies and listen to old music. I really don’t know or care about any of the new stars and celebrities but when I chance upon them while browsing the channels, stations or websites I find them mostly boring and unoriginal – well I suppose they must have some talent to be so popular. For any contemporary films I prefer to look for something from the non- AngloSaxon world – so many of the Western productions come over as thinly, or not so thinly, veiled ideological, social and cultural propaganda.
“You can blame Ted Post all you want”
Ted Post also directed Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970). So he’s tops in my book.
“Magnum Force featured Suzanne Sommers shaking her boobs”
What Magnum Force lacked is more naked young Suzanne Sommers.
“sassy, farting bulldog”
Gaseous, sassy dogs should be immediately shipped off to South Korea.
“Magnus Force is easily the best of them.”
The Dirty Harry sequels made in the 1970s are watchable mainly because they are products of a golden decade for Hollywood films. Sudden Impact and the other 80s Harry are strictly beer and drive-in fare.
Unforgiven?
Ironically, Magnum Force was in the theaters at the time of the NOI/Zebra Murders in San Francisco. I read that graffiti being scrawled on buildings said “Dirty Harry, Where Are You When We Need You.”
As “UNREELISTIC” as those 60s-80s films were regarding REALITIES IN RACE, they look pretty damn good compared to crap out there in the last 30-40 years. At least our good friend Harry and Paul did go up against some dindu nuffins. Today, IF Hymiewood decides to make a movie that isn’t based on some (((comic book))) or another endless sequel or remake of some 80s movies, they make sure all the heroes are non-Whites/Jews and all the villains are Whites who either don’t hate themselves or who don’t date or marry Blacks because they like their own kind. LMAO.
Does anyone sane White person even waste their time with anything that has came out in the last 20-30 years?
How about a review of top SJW & Anti-White movies. We could start with the SJW version of Dirty Harry, “Billy Jack.” Those Billy Jack movies are anti-White and hilariously dated, hell they are just plain hilarious, starting with Tom Laughlin playing an Injun half-breed.
Other SJW & Anti-White blasts from the past.
“To Kill A Mockingbird”
“Mississippi Burning”
Any movie based on WWII or the “holocaust” or featuring lead characters who are supposed to portray Jewish characters. You know damn well every one will suggest that Jews have been persecuted forever and ever.
And the one that is truly anti-White, but for some odd reason a great deal of Whites like it, which boggles my mind is “American History X.” Why any White who doesn’t hate himself enjoys this movie is beyond me.
I was twelve years old in 71 and I recall seeing Magnum Force and rooting for the rogue vigilante cops more than Harry.
I always liked the scene where they confront him in the parking garage and tell him “All our heroes are dead”.
Just goes to show I was a racist and a fascist at that early age…lol
Right Wing Death Squads.
We sure could use some right now,
Your grasp of the comma is problematic.
Sudden Impact coffee shop scene:
I’m surprised this hasn’t been canceled yet.
It’s also notable because it’s from the fourth film in the franchise, yet it has one of, if not the most recognizable one-liners from the entire franchise.
It’s complete bollocks – a movie myth.
A gasoline tank, unless it is very nearly empty, doesn’t have enough air in it for an explosive mix.
Another film fantasy : when someone is shot they don’t usually immediately keel over but keep going. That’s why police officers are told to shoot multiple times (three times is the minimum).
Robert Urich, one of the vigilantes, said that, right after the motorcycle cops rode out of the garage, every single one of them crashed.
I always wonder about western movies : are the actors trained how to ride a horse or just told to jump into the saddle regardless and shoot the scene.
So that scene and my comment obviously triggered you…lol
That’s good.
That’s exactly what it was designed for.
Depends on where and what they’re shot with, you fucking retard.
Cops don’t use .44 magnums, numbnuts.
A .44 magnum at 10ft center mass will stop you in your tracks. I don’t give a fuck if you’re Andre the Giant.
Shit son, 125 grain HP .357 is the mankiller.
Negroes often complain about lack of respect but dissing one another is a pastime of the Negro community.
Black violence is now ‘unprovoked attacks’.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/citizens-patrol-californias-chinatown-after-unprovoked-attacks
As I said in the review of Dirty Harry, the entire DH series follows the (tv show) Law and Order Rule of White Criminality 20 years in advance.
The Enforcer is seemingly based upon the Marin County Hostage Crisis but the terrorists are converted to whites.
The Black Panthers and the Zebra Killings were big news in San Fran especially in the early 70’s and the Dirty Harry series was busy looking for the great white criminal masterminds.
The vignettes in Sudden Impact were hilarious sure, but gangs of working class whites rampaging through the Bay area raping pretty white co-eds? Yeah Ok. Next Stop, Wakanda!
Ironically, Magnum Force was in the theaters at the time of the NOI/Zebra Murders in San Francisco. I read that graffiti being scrawled on buildings said “Dirty Harry, Where Are You When We Need You.
That is both sad and ironic.
Gee hun I hope that negro band of killers doesn’t attack us on the way to watch a movie about evil White cops killing people.
Cops don’t use .44 magnums, numbnuts.
Anyone who has shot a 44 can see why.
It’s just power overload and a poor trade-off in a combat situation. With the increase in power comes added weight and loss of control.
Fun to shoot but it would be an awful gun for running around a city like SF.
I don’t care about the premise of Harry using one. What annoys me is that they didn’t bother making it realistic. He takes all kinds of medium range one handed shots and the kick/sound is inconsistent.
If you got in a shoot out with a 44 you would blow your ears and then probably get shot before you actually hit anyone unless they were in close range. Even in those days it would be easy for someone with a 1911 or 357 to outrange someone with a 44 through better control. With a 44 you need to practice and get the hold right while a 1911 or 357 has a lot more room for error.
The other big problem is a miss. Whoops I missed the bad guy and severed your leg. Sorry lady. Then the department has to explain why their police officer had a hand cannon.
As I said in the review of Dirty Harry, the entire DH series follows the (tv show) Law and Order Rule of White Criminality 20 years in advance.
They are but Law and Order would never do the cafe or bank robbery scene. So two of them start with a glimpse of reality and then move onto to the real (White) criminals.
The vignettes in Sudden Impact were hilarious sure, but gangs of working class whites rampaging through the Bay area raping pretty white co-eds? Yeah Ok. Next Stop, Wakanda!
In Magnum Force they have the store shootout that is based on the NYPD stakeout squad. The real squad was disbanded because too many of the perps were Black. It didn’t matter that the squad was hiding in stores and not looking for anyone in particular.
In the movie they make the perps White and the leader is both gay and racist. I guess that is when gays were considered weirdo pervs and not a protected class.
OK, I got into this and looked up the actress who played that sleazy prostitute. Apparently Eve Brent was a real ‘scene stealer’ which might explain her thin but impressive resume. Other than a mid 50’s role as ‘Jane’ in a Tarzan movie her credits are few and far between. OTOH she played the mother of the LSD drenched teen in the famous ‘Blue Boy’ episode of Dragnet. I can still recall her to this day scolding Sgt. Joe Friday in her affluent Los Angeles home for interfering in her busy life. Apparently, in her later years, she also had a role in ‘The Green Mile’.
I mainly agree, but I do think Dirty Harry is easily the best of the series. While not quite as nihilistic in philosophy as Magnum Force, the first film does make the important point that no system is perfect. Far from it, in fact. The Miranda and Escobedo cases set valuable precedents, in my view, but obviously they were prone to criminal exploitation. The 1983 film The Star Chamber, a weak movie overall, illustrated this point nicely. Those high falutin’ things aside, as an action film Dirty Harry is tight, even more so than the Best Picture winning French Connection. The difference between Don Siegel and Ted Post, James Fargo, Buddy van Horn is vast.
An interesting movie that both romanticizes and subverts martial authority & culture of honor is TAPS. It’s better than MISHIMA.
It is the Un-Patton.
James Woods
Well, yes. But wear a condom and get yourself tested.
It was not a random rape. Locke and her sister went to a party at the beach. They were lured there by the female member of the group.
None of them committed another rape. One became a successful businessman. Mick went on to Vegas. None of them were committing crimes.
Locke went after them.
None of them model citizens, but they were not on a crime spree either.
They were doing what you would expect them to do. Hang around dive bars, work on the pier selling fish.
There have been three major arguments against vigilantes.
1. Even if the aggrieved go after the real villains, there is no due process. Thus, justice itself becomes criminal.
2. Even if the guilty are caught and punished, the vigilantes may go too far and resort to cruel and unusual punishment. Like torture and horrible lynching. While prog-types condemn lynching of blacks in the south(deemed ‘racist’ and cruel even when blacks were guilty), they seem to delight in their own revenge fantasies. There was a nasty piece of work called HARD CANDY, mental torture porn(though its pedo-gate vibes might appeal to the pizzagate crowd). Blacks and progs loved DJANGO UNCHAINED where a black guy and a German take the law into their own hands against slave masters and ‘racists’. Blacks loved the bloodbath, and there was a movie recently called MA where a black woman takes revenge on white kids. And a movie called INVISIBLE MAN had a white woman allying with a noble black man(LOL) to kill an evil white man. And GILR WITH DRAGON ASS TATTOO are vigilante movies that made huge fortunes as anti-nazi fantasies. In a way, many Nazi-hunter movies are vigilante in nature. Jews go rogue to catch Nazi criminals and bring them to justice.
Egoyan’s trashy and sleazy(how he has fallen) REMEMBER, like BOYS FROM BRAZIL, is about a Jew who goes rogue to hunt down Nazis. (Actually, it has a twist ending, but you get the point.)
DRAGON ASS TATTOO might be called leftist, but are the revenge fantasies of Jews and blacks leftist or rightist? If they are about pursuit of justice, they could be called leftist, but if the rage is driven by tribal rage, they’d be rightist.
The vigilantism in THE UNFORGIVEN is closer to leftism because the men are motivated, at least ostensibly, by a sense of injustice that the woman suffered. But the revenge fantasy of something like SWEEET SWEETBACK’S BLACK ASS SONG seems driven by racial animus, thus it could be called black-rightist.
Vigilantism becomes further confused when crime itself is regarded as justice.
Some vigilantes are law-and-order types who go outside the law to get the criminal. And yet, in going outside the law, they are nominally criminals themselves.
But what about those who turn to crime as righteous rebellion against society? Thus, crime itself turns into a kind of vigilantism. Black mentality works this way. They commit crime but believe they are OWED by a ‘racist’ society. A strain of leftism, especially in vogue in France in the 60s, encouraged acts of crime as revolutionary acts of justice.
3. The biggest problem of vigilantism is catching, tormenting, and/or killing the wrong person. If due process can sometimes convict the wrong person, a vigilante gang has a much bigger chance of hanging the wrong horse thief. Frontier justice was dangerous for this reason, and movies like OX-BOW INCIDENT illustrated the danger of vigilantism. Three men are hanged but they turn out to be innocent of the crime. And in Gregory Peck’s BRAVADOS , the hero catches up to the villains and kills them… only to find out he killed the wrong men.
Actually, MAGNUM FORCE is very consistent with the theme of DIRTY HARRY. Callahan is quintessentially American. He has a frontier mentality and believes in manhood and violence. But he’s all about freedom. He will never sacrifice freedom and individuality in the name of Order. He’s not the enemy of freedom and liberty. He’s the enemy of naivete and political opportunism. Some legislators just don’t know the reality, and some politicians are more interest in polls. So, he feels he has to go the extra mile to do what’s right on occasion. Still, he’s a defender of freedom, thus very much a John-Wayne-like character. John Wayne’s characters believe in toughness and violence but would never give up freedom and liberty. In THE SEARCHERS, he goes his own way and does it his way.
In contrast, the crypto-fascist cops in MAGNUM FORCE are about Order uber Freedom. They are committed to rooting out crime but their agenda goes much further. They have no use for freedom or liberty. They are about conformity, not individuality. They take orders from above and do as told, and they speak like clones. They are like Stepford Cops.
And in a way, they were prescient of the national security state that really took hold after 9/11, what with Bush II saying, “if you’re not with us, you’re against us.” And Jewpet Biden intends to broaden the War on Terror… this time against ‘deplorables’. Of course, the insane Jewish power plays it schizo. It will sometimes rile up BLM mobs and Antifa mobs and call for ‘defunding the police’ in the name of combating ‘systemic racism’. This throws a bone to the radicals and black voters. But when Jews feel threatened by white populists, they will totally be for law-and-order and turn DC into an armed camp.
This was the danger of National Socialism. True, there was a need for stability and order from the chaos and degeneration of Weimar Period, but should people surrender their freedom and individuality to authoritarianism? Will the New Power simply stop with restoring order OR will it have other agendas? Hitler couldn’t stop with national renewal. He had bigger expansionist ideas that led to war, and by that time, Germans couldn’t do anything about it as they’d give up all their rights and freedom.
So, in that sense, DIRTY HARRY wasn’t really fascist. It was a retro-Western in contemporary setting. It was about rage and violence but it was never about surrendering individual freedom for order. If anything, it is an ultra-individualist rebellion against Liberal Statism premised on naivete and cynicism. Unlike fascism, it wasn’t calling for more statism as the solution but more individual freedom to deal with criminals.
So, Callahan of MAGNUM FORCE is very consistent with the incarnation in the first film.
Jews called Trump ‘fascist’ for asking the military to do something about BLM riots, but after the Capitol building was occupied for a couple of hours, Jews and Democrats went ‘full-fascist’ and turned the whole city into a military zone.
It all comes down to “Is it good for Jews?” Jews are in heaven in the US.
Just think. Jewish Capitalist use ‘commies’ to attack ‘nazis'(the deplorables), but the ‘nazis’ defend the capitalists from the ‘commies’. ROTFL. Jewish oligarchs use Antifa against Deplorables, but Deplorables yap about ‘commies’ and ‘socialists’ in defense of the Rich Class, the Jews.
It’s like a man using dog A to attack dog B but dog B defending the master from dog A. Clown Show.
If deplorables had any sense, they would be for socialism of the national kind.
I wonder why this movie is so hard to find.
You are overlooking the case of Fred Stump,who suffered from a condition wherein his anus actually closed up! I believe it was written up in The Lancet.
Poor fellow passed away. He left behind a wife,Myrtle,and three children.
“He was a good man,” said Mrs. Stump,” he never asked for this.”
So,when it comes to assholes,no,not everyone has one. Fred Stump had one but he lost it. And with it,his life.
You’re missing my point, which is the portrayal of something that doesn’t exist. But Hollywood loves to pretend that they do. Leaving Las a Vegas offers another example of the fictional terror of the white rape gangs.
American History X?
Because the first half of the movie was a powerfully sympathetic portrayal of a skinhead.
And the lame ending and fake Nazi character simply tacked on to get the movie made. Reviewers were horrified they found the Norton character sympathetic. The fact the movie elicited that response speaks for itself.
Leaving Las Vegas was a great movie, however, those kids who raped the Elizabeth Shue character were portrayed as either high school kids or college kids picking up a hooker. Not a gang by any stretch. Gang rape, sure.
White gangs for all practical purposes DO NOT EXIST outside of Hollywood and maybe state penitentiaries. There have been GROUPS of Whites who have engaged in horrific crimes like The Manson Murders and one here in Georgia where a group of escaped convicts escaped a Maryland penitentiary and raped and slaughtered a family in rural southwest Georgia in 1973. It was 3 Whites, Carl Isaacs, Wayne Coleman, Isaacs half brother, Billy Isaacs, along with the brothers was Coleman’s homosexual black lover in prison, George Dungee. (((Isaacs))) is definitely a Jewish sounding surname, been a long long time since reading about this event but there is a good chance that Isaacs has some Jewish blood. Can’t remember if Isaac was the surname of Carl’s biological father or he adopted the surname of his mother’s second husband. The youngest, Billy Isaacs was only 15 years old at the time and was more or less along for the ride but the acts committed by Carl Isaacs, Wayne Coleman and George Dungee are horrific. Carl Isaacs himself had been raped for hours by Black inmates at a Maryland prison as an 18 year old kid doing his first serious stint, surely this experience didn’t help this guy, he was a piece of shit before that stint and even worse afterwards from what I read of him.
The reason is simple. The Right is usually Christian and as such usually burdened by moral considerations, whereas the godless Left has no such qualms. Besides, when speaking of leftist mobs, I think that a pack of hyenas is a more befitting comparison than a pride of lions.
“Not a gang by any stretch. Gang rape, sure.”
White group rape then, but still a phenomenon only a little less rare than unicorns or Big Foot.
Lions steal more from hyenas(better hunters) than other way around.
https://hyena-project.com/research-topics/conflict-with-lions/
“The reason is simple. The Right is usually Christian and as such usually burdened by moral considerations . . .”
I could make a case that my side of the aisle (if one is speaking about conservatives) has engaged in plenty of immoral thought and subsequent action.
But it’s a curious suggestion that morality is a barrier to effective leadership and governance. Quite the opposite.
But for all means, let’s stop being moral.
Laughing. That would simply make one a leftist — which defeats the overall intent.
White group rape is RARE indeed but it does exist. I vaguely remembered the Jodie Foster movie, “The Accused” that was ALLEGEDLY based on some girl being gang raped at some bar. Hopefully this movie was not another “A Time To Kill” distortion of the truth, a book and a movie where the writer and producers reverse the races. My gawd, talk about hate speech, you have a white girl gang raped by Blacks and you make a movie and book based on the incident but you reverse the races of the perp and the victim. SHAMEFUL.
And lest we forget all those German women raped during and after the war. Sure, the Mongolians troops and colonial troops were nonwhite but don’t think that some Americans, French, and Russians didn’t participate. I would bet that during Sherman’s “March To The Sea” that Southern women were raped by White Union soldiers and negroes. The accounts of American G.I’s raping Vietnamese or Japanese women? Men being men and war being war, I am sure some these things happened. Certain races can be very brutal and it does seem Whites are less brutal in times like these, but hey, they aren’t Angels either. Whites claiming to be holier than thou sounds kind of Jewy to me.
” Blacks and progs loved DJANGO UNCHAINED where a black guy and a German take the law into their own hands against slave masters and ‘racists’. ”
Actually that is not accurate, they were bounty hunters duly appointed to round up criminals.
And it appears that whites loved this film a well, at least the young.
Lions are notoriously lazy, especially the males. Maybe that is why they are the only cats that live in prides and hunt as a group. Tigers are very solitary creatures and far more admirable IMO.
There are still gay racists about in the SF Bay area …
Like a William S. Burroughs routine from the Naked Lunch come to life.
Harry is somewhat like Gary Cooper’s character in MEET JOHN DOE. ‘John Doe’ wants something better but doesn’t want to be a tool of an power-mad organization that seeking to impose its will over the populace. It’s part of the American Ethos of individualism and freedom, though it may have been more myth than reality where the real power was concerned. After all, while Jews were certainly for individuality, they were also for tribal-communal-unity. Jews feared German collectivism far more than Anglo-American individualism because collective unity leads to amassing of real power and could be used effectively against Jews.
Some have said GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE is the most fascist movie made by Hollywood.
Very 70s introduction. It was considered a bit edgy even at the time (in my youth I remembering reading a review of Keaton’s career up to that point that mentioned it).
I never suggested that morality is a barrier to effective leadership or governance. On the contrary, I consider that immoral governance is a calamity. One only has to look at the current state of the world. However, immoral candidates do have a clear advantage over moral ones in the contest for positions of leadership as they don’t waver over means to achieve their ends.
As for conservatives behaving in an immoral manner, well, life would be too simple if the Left had a monopoly on turpitude.
Lions are too both too big and too small to be lone beasts.
They are too big and bulky to chase after fast game. Cheetahs are much faster and hunt on their own. Leopards are smaller and sleeker. They are superb stealth hunters. Lions are too big for lone stealth hunting. So, they hunt best as a group.
Also, as powerful as they are, lions are not big or fast enough to defend themselves as lone animals. Cheetahs can run from danger. Leopards can climb trees. Lions are fast but not that fast. And they are poor climbers. If Africa weren’t so dangerous, maybe lions could be lone animals like tigers. But there are hyenas, enough of which can kill a lion. And there are cape buffalos that hate lions.
To be a lone animal in Africa, you gotta be real big, like rhino or giraffe. Indeed, even elephants and hippos work mostly as herds… though male elephants can go rogue on its own.
So, the best survival strategy for lions is to work as a pack.
As for laziness, all cats are like that. Housecat sleeps 20 hrs a day. Tigers mostly sleep when not hunting.
Government/The State in never going away. That is a Libtardarian fantasy. In the case of the US, the government may eventually collapse, but the vacuum will be filled in short order. That you can count on.
I agree, but it can only work in a racially homogenous nation. Which the ((( Money People))) will never allow.
That German guy in the movie(Django Unchained) is a proto-Bolshevik subversive. You won’t get it if you don’t know what “forty-eighter” means.
It was people like Schultz who made Lincoln president.
“You won’t get it if you don’t know what “forty-eighter” means.”
Authoried bounty hunters nonetheles. As for being subversive that all depends in this circumstace. He hel views that were embraced by millions. Fewer were willing to act on it, but if ubversiove, then it is subversive among the states that endorsed the pravctice. What’s interesting about the slavery debate is that the matter is very clear — if slaves were human beings then slavery was a monumental wrong, if their were in fact less than human and property then their value was measured not by a scale of all other humans and citizens, but monetary/production value.
I had two issues with the film portrayal of blacks as violent prone and the biarre nature of the relations they had with whites with respect to the plantation.
What I liked was te story telling device — The story of knight who rscues the wgirl told as parallel to th rescuing the slave.
A mistke to kill off ACtor Christopher Waltz , in my view
As for laziness, all cats are like that. Housecat sleeps 20 hrs a day. Tigers mostly sleep when not hunting.
He is talking about how the males let the females do most of the hunting.
Then they come over and take the best cuts.
“It’s not a rip-off. It’s an homage.” – Peter Swan
It’s right there, in the script.
Another fun-fact, ‘The Dead Pool’ director Buddy Van Horn was Clint Eastwood’s stunt double for over 20 years. Steve McQueen’s favorite stunt-double was Bud Ekins, who did the risky driving in ‘Bullitt’ (and jumped the motorcycle over the fence in ‘The Great Escape’). Burt Reynolds had a similar relationship with stuntman/director Hal Needham (“Stuntman! is Needham’s awesome autobiography) and Tarantino made, um, homage, to the symbiotic friendships in “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.”
Steve McQueen, Lee Marvin, James Coburn, Robert Mitchum, and sometimes James Garner. All White Nationalist studs. But Clint Eastwood is the prototype, in a post-John Wayne America.
It’s a miracle any of the DH films are still around. There was a line in Magnum Force where Harry’s partner asks why the fashy cops seem so “queer for each other,” a line now scrubbed from tv viewings.
Like 90% of Shitwood’s output not even the worst of the DH films could be made today.
Scratch that.
Occasionally, I get the urge to look into the personal lives of celebrities, and now that I’ve done that with Eastwood, I have to say he doesn’t come across as a very nice guy at all, but rather as a Lothario, libertine, and free ranging womanizer, not that he is or was alone in that regard, especially in Hollywood, where Errol Flynn, a host of handsome studs, and even Ronald Reagan warmed their self-esteem in Tinsel Town’s bonfire of the panties:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_life_of_Clint_Eastwood
Of course, it always takes two to tango. How does anyone think those beautiful dames ever got to and “made it” in Hollywood in the first place?
I saw a video once of the guy who owned Vince’s Gym in California, Vince Gironda was his name, and he had a slew of celebrities that he trained or worked out at his gym. One of them was Clint Eastwood. Vince Gironda was known for being a straight shooter to say the least. Anyhow during this interview Vince was asked about the celebrities who came to his gym or who he trained and Eastwood was brought up. lolol. Vince said that when tough guy Clint was getting his start that Clint’s old lady supported him. hahaha. So much for the alpha male movie star. Have you wife support you while you learn to pretend to be someone else in make believe land. Go ahead make my lunch was probably what Clint was saying in REAL life.
“bonfire of the panties.” ROTFLMMFWAO at that one.
It would seem to me that Any Which Way was one of the most realistic depictions of blue-collar white prole life that was put on film.
It did not depict working class white Americans as inbred chainsaw-wielding loonies or morons.
To me it seemed very honest on Eastwood’s part.
You don’t have to bet. University of South Carolina library archives contain many volumes of accounts of rape of Southern women by Union rabble. Sherman’s “Bummers” were especially notorious.
Of course, there is the incident of the Roswell women, which even filled many of the Northern journalists with disgust.
https://www.americancivilwarforum.com/charged-with-treason-the-plight-of-the-roswell-women-472.html
McCausland’s men should have killed every living thing in Chambersburg before they burned it to the ground.
No rules when fighting those who abide by none.
“Any Which Way”
Every Which Way But Loose (1978) and Any Which Way You Can (1980) were aimed at working and middle class whites and were both boffo at the box-office. IMO second only to the westerns in Eastwood’s filmography. An orangutan, Ruth Gordon, Bakersfield twang, and the Valley in the late 70s. Great with beer.
Downer ending. Remake would be hard to pitch because most eligible young white women stay home at night with their dogs.
“Billy Jack movies are … hilariously dated”
Billy Jack was the original white anti-racist. The first Billy Jack movie, not to be confused with the 60s biker flick Born Losers where the character was introduced, goes well with Gavin Newsom’s PlumpJack hybrid bud.
I think many of you are missing one essential aspect of the series evolution. That was to make him less a caricature, In the subsequent films a less subtle element was the character’s vulnerabilities.
for instance he assumes his friend has gone over the edge when in fact, it’s the the least expected men who are the actors in multiple criminal acts.
And while not meant as part of the series, “Play Misty for Me”,”Tight Rope” reveal a hefty does of human flaws. I think the last Harry film is probably “Torrino” (which reflects a less vulnerable good guy in the mold — Harry retired. though not part of that genre’)
just a thought. It’s hard not see Director Eastwood’s films in light of his entire career in light of the discussion
———————–
“It did not depict working class white Americans as inbred chainsaw-wielding loonies or morons.”
Again, Torrino
hahhahaaaaa – white guys are nuthin
When they are, as in when they pull a fade, cities like Detroit sure collapse. Read Michelle Obama complain that her neighborhood collapsed after white people pulled up stakes & rolled out to the suburbs…who would want to live next door to her?
Come to think of it, if you have a job, chances are it was given to you by a white man who formed a corporation. And some of them were Jews.
I cannot think of many African-American owned corporations. There are a few of course.
I was not familiar with Mr. Stump’s situation, but it proves there are exceptions to most rules.
I always thought the most dehumanizing part of that scene was the early morning taxi ride home, driven by ever-creepy Xander Berkeley and his passive-aggressive small-talk…”rough night?”.
Well, let’s not forget that Jeffrey Dahmer was a German-Norwegian specimen of Nordic perfection who took severed head to work to get his freak on with at lunch.
Or Bobbie Joe Long. Or Bundy. Or Speck.
Usually they’re intelligent. They usually get away with crimes much longer than blacks because their IQ is high.
It’s the same with Tony Soprano. He was smarter than a Crip or a Blood but not much more moral.
DIRTY HARRY was fairly accurate about this. The black criminals were morons. The hicks like the rapists in SUDDEN IMPACT were a little smarter. SCORPIO was smarter still. But none of them were as successful as the Italians in MAGNUM FORCE. That was why the death squad was formed was because otherwise there was no way to stop the Italians. David Soul says it in the parking lot.
Hal Holbrook and David Soul were really waging a war against the Italians. They killed a black pimp as well, but the real targets were the mafiosos.
It is more like black crime is simply low IQ stupidity. A Tony Soprano is not going resist arrest. He’s going to show his policeman’s ball card.
Art House vigilante film. IN THE BEDROOM.
GET CARTER is like a gangster vigilante film. Gangsters are criminals but have their own codes and rules. But Carter becomes so unhinged that he goes after everyone and upsets the system. He goes rogue even as a criminal.
American History X had its moments. If they didn’t cut the scene of Derek shaving his head at the end, it would’ve been better.
A lot of those rapes were done by Central Asians and other non- Russian ethnics. A large chunk of European Slavic Russians had died fighting in the earlier phase of the war with the Germans when the Soviets started recruiting minorities with more gusto. Many a times it were not the frontline fighting Soviet troops (mostly made up of Slavic Russians) who raped but second wave troops with a huge share of Soviet “minorities” mostly led by NKVD kikes. I had read of cases of frontline Slavic Russian Soviet troops, telling Germans and other Eastern European women to run and escape West because they knew what horror they would face with the barbaric waves coming after them.
Of course there were cases of Morrocan, Indian etc troops of the British Indian Army or French Colonial Army… troops raping in Western Europe. Indian soldiers (POW from British Indian Army) who joined the German SS Waffen and Wehrmacht were the worst treated (brutally) by fellow brown Morrocan French colonial troops upon surrender rather than white troops.
Whatever one says, both the World Wars were disasters for the White Race (& probably Yellows) and thus the world.
Things I Learned From Clive the Orangutan & Clint
Olympic quality boxers will live in Oakie hovels out West somewhere with their elderly mothers when they are pushing 50 years old.
Motorcycle gangs would never think of simply shooting the trucker they are trying to kill.
Pale wan 35-ish Sandra Locke so irresistible woman on the planet that womanizers will follow her all over the Western USA.
She cannot sing, either.
A musclebound black belt who is apparently an expert in joint lock techniques will lose to a “swarmer” who throws the same jab punches 50 times with no variation.
Multi-million dollar fights being bankrolled by the East Coast mob to which gamblers arrive in private jets will take place in public on a small town streets like an after school fight.
If you are risking your life in bareknuckle fights always trust your money with a orangutan you won in a match.
Various flabby bar flies will go out of their way to start fights with nasty-looking 6’4 men who cannot say a single word to anyone without spitting it out in a snarl.
If a grubby man with a face as lined as an old lizard who is wearing a dirty t-shirt & lives with an ape takes your peanuts demand them back so you can eat them after he has had them in his orangutan penis-tinged hand.
Cops will not call animal control if your pet orangutan takes a steaming huge shit in their patrol car.
The best way time to threaten a skilled veteran fighter is when you are fishing so he can hit you with your own catch & then punch you 10 times in the skull while you are standing in water deep enough to drown in & you only have one arm arm.
No jogging routine is complete without a dangerous route alongside a cliff where the ground falls out underneath you & your jogging acquaintance nearly falls 100 feet to his death.
When you save him he’ll repay you by intentionally starting a bar brawl where you are nearly stabbed.
Now that is funny. I wonder if Eastwood brown-bagged it to the gym.
Clint & Maggie with parakeets
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/clint-the-man-with-no-shame-26152887.html
Well, as others have said, that .44 magnum is really not the kind of handgun you’d want to lug around, and shooting that hand cannon without eye and ear protection is all Hollywood.
.44 magnum in action
Photo: Ultimatereloader.com
Revolvers do not have a tight seal between the bullet chamber and the barrel, and a burst of hot gasses escape here when the revolver is fired.
.38 special
Wikimedia
Many interesting high speed photographs of pistols being fired here:
http://kuulapaa.com/home/highspeed/pistols.html
Probably much the same happened to the SS with many dying earlier in the war so that they had to be replaced with East European, Muslim, and Indian (as you pointed out) recruits.
Lots of good stuff there.
“Oakie hovels out West”
Familiar with a few of them.
Eastwood, who was raised in an itinerant atmosphere during the Depression (Scots father, Dutch-Irish mother) seemed to really understand this blue-collar life of honkytonk bars & meatpacking plants & truck stops. He did, in fact, play piano for money as a young man in the Palamino.
No other film, in my opinion, managed to sum up the freewheeling allure of the road & its lowbrow nobility.
I also felt Eastwood understood, brilliantly, its downbeat aspects. Locke turns out to be a little more than a transient scam artist with a lowlife husband who finally tells Eastwood point blank the truth & we don’t know whether Philo threw the final fight to let Tank keep his title or because his wily brother rigged the fight for money.
Eastwood also captured the environment brilliantly. No other film depicted the Valley more accurately in that time & place.
Any Which Way But Loose was less insincere but equally accurate of the milieu.
you misunderstand my message – it was to the old guys…to the DS guys.
Maybe.
I kind of get the feeling Eastwood can be an SOB to women.
Every Which Way But Loose? REEL LIFE: Clint beats up a whole motorcycle gang and walks away without a scratch. REAL LIFE: Clint is bitch slapped by some Hell’s Angel and then stomped out by his buddies.
EWWBL? REEL LIFE: Tank Murdoch is a 60 year old dude with dyed hair who can barely move but is somehow a local fighting legend. These dudes are having a fight at some mine, factory or whatever during the middle of a shift and no cops are in site much less a supervisor. REAL LIFE: Fat guys over 60 with dyed hair aren’t street fighting legends or if they were, they are so beaten up by 60, they can barely get out of the chair much less fight.
EWWBL? REEL LIFE: Clint Eastwood has perfectly styled hair, Clint’s hair is perfect even when throwing down with fat Black guys trying to act like Muhammad Ali in a meat factory. Clint does no actual fight training except lift engine blocks and jog down the road. The fights are ALMOST bloodless, a little dab here and there, no knocked out teeth, no broken noses or eye sockets, fights between two big adult men can be brutal and savage and aren’t pretty to watch, most are over with in seconds, maybe minutes at most. The truth is the average street fight that involves the average untrained male is often remarkably like the two trannies that you see fighting in a McDonald’s parking lot at 3 AM. Nothing macho or glamorous about it.
The central villain of the avengers franchise, to which they’ve made like 7 films in the past decade for, is a blue space ogre and his mulatto daughters.
Hollywood being (((Hollywood))) you have to wonder how many of these handsome leading men were either bisexual, queer, or at the very least gay for pay. Imagine Clint or The Duke being gay for pay? lololol.
Who knows? Perhaps Eastwood’s womanising is a compensation for some form of homosexual casting couch experience that he might have had as part of the cost for making it in Hollywood?
However, I think women have had to do it more to get ahead in Tinseltown.
Every time I see Leonardo DiCaprio and a quite a few other actors the gaydar alarm goes bonkers. To be honest, I don’t get that feeling with Eastwood and certainly not with The Duke. Matt Damon? Absolutely. George Clooney? You bet. I could name a helluva lot of others but it is pretty obvious that a great deal of these actors are not the straight men they portray themselves to be. Tom Cruise? Oh, boy, the alarm is really sounding, all hands on deck. hahaha.
I am certain Eastwood and the Duke were not into men, but who knows what Faustian bargains they made to get ahead in Tinseltown?
The others – they might have done it and even liked it.
I agree, it is hard to imagine The Duke and even Clint doing that sort of thing, just talking smack when it concerns those two, but the others I mentioned are all creepy looking mofos especially Leo, Mattie and Tom. haha. Clooney might just be a pretty boy type but the other three? lolol.
Rock Hudson and Errol Flynn fall into that category…
Ones we didn’t know about when they were acting..
Heard of more, but don’t recall the names…
Bet the number of Athletes is larger than the ones that were outed after retirement etc
Harry Brown? Well crafted, and Michael Caine is back near the top of his form. But. The movie punked out in its gang characterization. The young nasties were all whites — this in modern London! Not a single black or West Indian criminal. Political correctness must be served.
Relax – I am on your side – you are new here. I am trolling old friends (while Steve allows it, hahhahahaaaa – Bless his heart!) who hated me (never Steve – he liked me to fight like a crazy person!) being a truth bomber; a take-no-prisoners, warrior woman, going back about 8 years. I was very female, very alone surrounded by male commenters I was frightened of, loved, respected and enjoyed fighting with. Fighting is big fun as long as it is filled with laughter – that was my childhood upbringing: debate, laugh, but do not needlessly hurt or, for fuck’s sake, do not use a knife at the dinner table! hahhahaaaaa!
I would feel very hurt (on Unz) at times, and I lashed-out, like a dummie, but, it is cartoon-world. So, nothing is personal, ever. If it was personal, we would be too conscious of being naked to the world to see. Honesty is the final stage to understand grace and true goodwill. The Grace of God is a state of mind that we all need to reach.
Why was Clint Eastwood THE LAST CHOICE to play HARRY CALLAHAN in the 1970’s hit film “DIRTY HARRY”?
Suggested edit:
“…all hands on dick. hahaha.”
Pete Hamill wrote the 1973 renegade cop movie Badge 373 , which was extremely hard edged on race, and not very successful, probably because Duval spouting Hamill’s dialogue created a character who was much too real.
The Dirty Harry line was “Go Ahead, Make My Day”. The recent murder of the snow shoveling couple by their neighbor was precipitated by the wife saying ‘ Go ahead!’ to the gun toting man who had came out to confront her and her husband.
Just to set the record straight, a 2004 article in The Guardian reports that Clint Eastwood sued the author and publisher of Clint: The Life and Legend about the allegation in the book that Eastwood “decked” his wife Maggie.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2004/aug/13/news1
Apparently, the party who recanted was Eastwood’s old pal Fritz Manes, who died in 2011, aged 79.
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS6945634920111012
For her part, Maggie Eastwood Johnson occasionally appears with Clint Eastwood, as here in 2018 when the two donated some of their property to the Big Sur Land Trust:
http://theclinteastwoodarchive.blogspot.com/2016/07/clint-and-maggie-eastwood-donate-79.html
Note that the verbally aggressive husband immediately backed down once he saw the gun, lowering his voice and imploring the shooter to “Put the gun down.” While the wife persisted and screamed at him to “Go ahead!” in a challenge to the shooter, which put him over the edge.
The shooter was a middle aged bachelor and engineer. An introverted type and as an engineer, probably very high in impulse control. He probably would’ve relented had the wife backed down like the husband did once the gun came out.
They had been taunting him by calling him “queer” and “pussy,” which of course is aimed at questioning and casting doubt on his masculinity and manhood, and as an introverted middle aged bachelor living alone, both the couple and he knew that that was the intention of those taunts and the purpose was to get under his skin and elicit a reaction from him. Such taunts are aggravated and heightened when women are in the vicinity and even more so when they are coming from a woman.
In Badge 373 the potbellied Irish cop Eddie Ryan calls the arrestee he has cornered on top of a multistory building a “spic”, then suggests “big spades” in prison will be imposing themselves on both ends of his digestive system. In what is perhaps an ironic reference to the scene where Dirty Harry rescues a suicidal fellow from a ledge, the aformentioned Hispanic man is then thrown off the roof by Detective Ryan, who is has to surrender his badge and gun. But retrieving an unregistered snub nose revolver he has hidden for such eventualities, Ryan goes on a rampage with it strapped to his ankle. The Ryan character created by Hamill was based on real life NYPD French Connection case detective Eddie Egan,
a considerable contrast with the tall slim, and handsome Eastwood
As for the late Mr Spaide, he seems to have had an awful lot of guns he wanted to use (a pistol, AR type rifle, and then another rifle on himself). He strikes me as the sort who would have liked Dirty Harry, who caught the eye of a gay neighbor in Magnum Force.
I suppose the moral is that waving big guns about is unmanly and don’t expect people to be cowed by them, more likely to regard you with contempt and anger. The other side of the coin is that wife who died (the mother of an autistic child) perhaps had genes for excessive single mindedness. She certainly was concentrating on one thing (winning the conversational conflict) without considering that Dirty Harry had the gun when he said “Go Ahead”.
I just assume at least half of all male actors are gay.
Hollywood seems like a pretty awful place if you are straight.
The fact that so many get married but don’t have kids is also suspicious.
Trevor Lynch, I enjoy your writing and the subjects you choose to write about. Here is another small bit of trivia I hope you find interesting.
A friend of mine, now a comedian, stuntman, screenwriter and published author, saw ‘Dirty Harry’ in theaters as a seventh grader. He wrote to Clint Eastwood and explained that the movie made him want to become a police officer and kill bad guys. Eastwood actually wrote him back and told him that police officers uphold the law and help people and only shoot when they are forced to do so. My friend ran into Clint Eastwood at a film festival 20 years later and told him about the letter he sent and the reply. Clint said, “I remember that letter. So what are you doing now?” “I’m a comedian.” “Well…I guess you’re killing them in your own way.”
He told me this story 30 years after Magnum Force came out, but reflecting on the story and dialogue (“I’m afraid you’ve misjudged me”) one can see how Eastwood and screenwriter John Milius wanted to counter the (intentional?) misunderstanding by the Pauline Kaels that Harry Callahan was a fascist. So much more to these movies if you know a bit about them and the context of the time 40+ years ago. Fortunately, Frisco is in much better shape today.:-)
I don’t know if the absence of kids means anything. A famous homosexual like Oscar Wilde had two sons, and nobody suggested his wife (who was devastated by the scandal that engulfed him) was cheating on him.
I suspect bisexuality is pretty common in Hollywood – all those good-looking people of both sexes.
https://www.zimbio.com/Scarlett+Johansson+Deborah+Kara+Unger/pictures/pro
Picture from 2004. I am not aware of either of them being lesbian or bi, but the older Deborah Kara Unger does look like she is expressing attraction for the younger woman. Having said that, women hugging like that is less likely to have a sexual significance than if men did it.
Dirtier than Dirty Harry.
Interesting. A sort of feminist Death Wish. I had not heard of this one, though.
Should check out “Shoot em Up”…
Bullets flying from Title to the Credits…..
Dirty Harakiri
It’s like trash Bunuel.
Farewell, Buddy Van Horn, R.I.P.