Directed by Don Siegel
Written by Harry Julian Fink, R. M. Fink, Dean Riesner
Starring:
- Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan
- Harry Guardino as Bressler
- Reni Santoni as Chico
- John Vernon as The Mayor
- Andrew Robinson as the Killer (credited as Andy Robinson)
- John Larch as Chief
Rating: 
America’s freak-out over the youthquake of the 1970s—radical kids, pop-art provocateurs, and the whole psychedelic revolt—crystallizes here as righteous bile and ballistic therapy, all pumped through Harry Callahan’s chrome-shining .44 Magnum. Don Siegel slices the film like a street butcher, building a relentless city-nightmare as Harry stalks Zodiac/Scorpio, a jittery maniac who treats San Francisco like a personal shooting gallery. Andy Robinson’s twitchy sadism and Eastwood’s cold-blooded serenity feel like two mutant offspring of the same cultural panic, their moral wiring disturbingly interchangeable. The film’s supposed “fascism” isn’t an ideology so much as a grim realism about a sick country trying to cauterize its own wounds. Eastwood, reconfiguring his Spaghetti Western DNA in the concrete sprawl, sets the tone for every hard-nosed movie cop that would later clog the genre. And though time blunts a few shocks, the film’s bruised masculinity and feral energy still punch like a bar-fight sermon.
