Dirty Harry (1971)

Dirty Harry (1971) Directed by Don Siegel

America’s consternations over the burgeoning 1970s countercultural progressivism embedded in youthful iconoclasm and the ethos of pop art take the form of cynicism and cathartic violence, judgmental and acrimonious emotions contained in the gleaming .44 Magnum revolver of rugged Inspector Harry Callahan. Expert montagist Don Siegel directs this seminal action thriller about “Dirty” Harry’s efforts to catch a psychotic criminal alias Zodiac – later Scorpio – who terrorizes the city of San Francisco with his hot-headed desire to kill with his sniper rifle. Andy Robinson’s violent histrionics as the vile Scorpio along with Eastwood’s laid-back coolness as Harry are intensely mythologized as a creation of society itself; the prejudices of both characters are chillingly interchangeable. The pre-New Hollywood thriller genre has never seen such an ironic dynamic, which is why the so-called fascist idealism with which the film is pigeonholed is actually an unsavory realism. Although Eastwood’s creditable performance -aggressively masculine and refreshingly insolent- seems like an urban version of his roles in Spaghetti Westerns, his politically incorrect appeal and dialectical impact on the plot encapsulate him as one of the great depictions of the tough cop that would later become a perpetual cliché in the new Hollywood. Undeniably, this is an important point in the first modern decade of cinema, however hackneyed some of its sequences may feel today, its brainless macho eloquence remains fucking badass.