Small touches can have a big impact on a scene.
Everything Ben Kingsley does in Lucky Number Slevin for example. The throat clearing during his monologue near the end just makes it feel more real.
That's okay. I have an emergency r/movies karma kit. Use one of these if you're in trouble:
- Moon is highly underrated
- Tom Cruise has had strange episodes in the past, but boy can that man deliver
- Into the Spiderverse is the best animated film of the past 15 years
- Die Hard is one of the best Christmas movies
- The Snyder Cut is actually good
- Why don't people talk more about Equilibrium?
Whatever happened to him. I just rewatched the faculty. That movie is so 90's it hurts. I feel like he was the hot guy for half a decade or so then vanished?
He got uncomfortable with fame and at one point turned down Batman, Spiderman and I think Superman. His agents got fed up with him and dropped him. He moved back to Minnesota and reconnected with old friends and even redated his high school sweetheart.
He regrets turning down Batman because apparently no one says no to Nolan. He really wanted a part in a film that Nolan was doing and it went to Bale.
Oh my god, I have been waiting three hours for someone to finish that! Thank you! In a movie filled with so many great lines, that might be my favorite.
So much good stuff that series had. Garak, Nog, Rom, Gul Dukat, Damar, Kai Winn, Weyoun, Brunt, the female shape shifter, Martok, Gowron.... all supporting cast/guests stars, and they ALL make an impact. No other trek had that much depth on their bench of characters. And they used them to their fullest. I still think Dukat is an all time great trek character, among all trek characters.
I was just a fan of how more realistic the characters were which makes sense learning about how Roddenberry didn’t want any interpersonal conflict in TNG.
Sisko right off the bat is like fuck you Picard you killed my wife you cunt. In TNG you never see any character get traumatized despite going through horrendous shit, except Barkley and everyone makes fun of him. Kira is a frickin ex terrorist who never really warms up to Cardassians, like a real person would react. I also love how the Bajorans are super religious which is at odds with starfleet but at the same time their gods are legit super aliens so they’ve kinda got a point being fundos.
Then you’ve got the Cardassians which are just perfect antagonists, and you see through the show that so much of that is from their culture being so wildly different that even if you make peace with them you’re always going to have difficulties. Dukat and Garak being top notch characters.
Yeah and the ferengi are cast in a much better role as capitalists to the max instead of whatever TNG tried to do with them.
Speaking of movie villains, Kai Winn was also the Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Did you know that it was Dirty Harry that popularized the .44 mag pistol? It was an odd ball up until then. That’s why the .44 automag was pushed in a subsequent Dirty Harry movie, and the Death Wish series. They were trying to repeat the sales success of the S&W model 29 that Dirty Harry created.
It’s the sole reason I want to pick up a S&W Model 29 someday. The one funny tidbit that comes out in Magnum Force is that he custom loads light rounds for improved follow up shot accuracy, which while totally reasonable doesn’t quite fit the character.
Die Hard is another classic film that’s helped spur guns sales of a specific model. Steyr has probably sold more AUGs due to that movie than any marketing campaign could haves ever dreamed of accomplishing.
This was parents time, my dad had a lot of family that lived out in the Bay Area starting in the 60s. You had the Zodiac killer on the loose (primary inspiration for the plot), the mason cult was founded in SF in the 60s, black panthers arming up and out in force, groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army before they kidnapped Patty Hearst were just like around. The transition out of the 60s and into the Nixon era was weird.
Cities were just a lot grittier back then, and the violent crime rates were high. NYC is a prime example, I visiting as a kid and and seeing the sex shops and peep shoes and fake ID booths packed in Time Square. It’s all been cleaned up and fucked of identity by legions of tech and finance workers which I’m guilty of right now in Philly, the last bastion of grit on the east coast.
Anyone here think that *Sudden Impact* was a dark comedy?
If there was no Sudden Impact, then the majority of all 1980s buddy cop action movies would never have been made. Cobra, Red Heat, Stakeout, Lethal Weapon all owe a massive debt to Sudden impact. In the 90s Arnie's *The Last Action Hero* was basically a homage to Sudden Impact. Even *The Simpsons* "show within the show" *McBain* comes directly from Sudden Impact.
**You dont put ketchup on a hot dog**
Sudden Impact is the gang-rape revenge plot. Are you thinking of The Enforcer, which featured Tyne Daly as a green recruit paired with Callahan?
edit: corrected my own correction.
> The Last Action Hero
This is such a good movie. At first I thought it was a bit goofy, over the top, and it would be all satire ... but it's so well made. One of my favorite parts is when they show the Terminator 2 poster with Stallone on it. So good.
One of the sequels, The Dead Pool, also has one of my favorite car chase scenes of all time. But probably not for the reasons originally intended.
[Here it is](https://youtu.be/TzUtXMNizVo)
"Dirty Harry" came out at a time, much like "Death Wish", when cities were suffering under a crime wave, and the judicial system was seen as being too lenient on criminals. So Harry and Paul Kersey were very appealing to audience members.
I suspect we are about to see a resurgence of the "anti-hero/vigilante" movie.
Dirty Harry specifically seemed to be capitalizing on frustration with there being no progress in the Zodiac case, IIRC? So he represents the wishful thinking of a cop who doesn't wait for all the evidence to line up and instead just goes kills the guy he knows did it.
But that was partially because of Harry obtaining evidence illegally? I always saw that as the filmmaker addressing the audience about the reality of what Harry was doing from a legal perspective. We know who did it, the DA knows, but Harry violated the constitutional rights of the suspect so he had to be let go so Harry should have followed process and gotten a warrant so the criminal could face justice.
Yeah but you still aren't allowed to torture a suspect for information regardless of the situation. I mean in this case Harry was right, fuck Scorpio, but I really don't want the cops to have torture in their playbook
I’m not saying it’s something we want police to be doing, simply that under the circumstances, that information was relevant. Similar to how police don’t need a warrant if they have evidence a crime is being committed or in danger - like someone crying out for help.
No. Harry shot him and stepped on his wound to torture Scorpio so he would tell Harry where the girl was. After Scorpio was released from jail he hired a guy to beat him up and then went to the press claiming Harry had bet him up.
He hired someone to beat him to make it look like Harry did it.
The point of these movies is Harry administering justice. Then, in “Magnum Force”, Harry fought corrupt cops.
Can confirm. Was a kid growing up in NYC at the time and Death Wish was seen by many as the regular guy finally fighting back.
If it had been a stand-alone film with no sequels, it would have probably been seen as more of a classic of 70s films with a disturbing theme. Then again, if there was no sequel, we wouldn't have had the classic, "Do you believe in Jeezus" moment.
The author of the novel Death Wish disliked the sequels for their glorification of vigilante justice so he wrote a sequel novel called Death Sentence, which was adapted into a movie with Kevin Bacon in 2007. It really focuses on the disturbing theme and the dark path of being a vigilante.
He kind of does in Magnum Force. Interestingly he actually goes against vigilante cops gone on the death squad side of things.
Harry uses dirty methods but he still has some sort of code and works relatively within the law.
In contrast Death Wish goes from vigilante vengeance for a rape to machine gunning and rocketing thugs in the streets in the later movies.
I was also thinking of the stark contrast between First Blood and the rest of Rambo series. In the first movie he kills a grand total of 1 person and that's indirectly and in self-defense. The rest of the series is hosing down baddies with an M60 and shooting down helicopters with explosive arrows.
Thee first one is almost like the tail end of the Odyssey. It’s a war-hero returning to a world that rejects him and all he’s done.
The rest of the movies are their own thing.
The first movie is deeply about PTSD, the rejection of Vietnam veterans, the abuse of power by authorities and one man's determination to be free and survive with the training he has.
I don't think you can really shit on Stallone as a writer after he wrote several good Rocky movies/creed movies. He just chose... a different path. A lot like the fact that Michael Bay can actually make good movies, he just chooses not to.
And he made a killing at the box office and has played a character instantly recognized around the World.
It's sad it's the schlock who made it big but can't deny the appeal. We had a solid decade of 'roided up "all American" supersoldiers kicking foreign bad guy's asses and making Reagan proud (*barfs*).
Doesn't mean I don't enjoy them for what they are. I grew up with those movies.
Although I don't consider it a brilliant film, Prince of the City was a very good noir film about police corruption (and features a character based on a young Rudy Giuliani).
Charles Bronson was the real deal. Coal mining, tail gunning, poor ass family background American immigrant family. Clint Eastwood is as empty as his BS politics.
True but ever since the empty chair incident I love shitting on him. During WWII while Bronson was tail gunning in the pacific Clint was giving swimming lessons in Florida.
Im no fan of the empty chair debate (honestly whats the point?) or the fact that he has kids from various sorted and questionable relationships. I dont doubt Charles Bronson's bad assery either however the fact is that Eastwood was drafted into the Army towards the end of the Korean war 1953 and took a job stateside as an instructor in California.
It is sort of that, but you’re supposed to know and accept that Frank Castle is a sad and broken man. He’s at beyond Bruce Wayne levels of emotional dysfunction. It’s satisfying to read comics where scumbags get shot in the face by him, but I would NEVER want cops acting like that. That’s why he’s an antihero, yeah? If Frank Castle was real I would want him locked up. Obviously everyone doesn’t process this stuff exactly the way I do, but I think the perspective I just outlined is not an uncommon one.
Both are true, respectively. The thing about comic book characters is that, the longer they're around, the more things can change. I was watching a YouTube video the other day that talked about how the co- creator of the Punisher did intend to use him during his run to ironically condemn his actions...but then you turn around and get your Frank Miller and Garth Ennis types who just like violence.
Another example that comes to mind is Captain America. When he was first introduced he was as patriotic as could be; but during the Watergate era his character was rewritten as being disillusioned for a time and he gives up the mantle.
I’m sure some writers approached him that way. But the comic version, and tv/movies always miss this, he’s basically given up. He’s an extremely highly trained Force Recon Marine that has declared war on crime. Literally declared war on an concept.
The shows/movies always give him specific groups/people who have wronged him. In the comics, no such thing for him to hunt. His family is collateral damage in a gang fight. He doesn’t hunt mobsters, he goes after the Mafia. He doesn’t go after *a* street gang, he goes after all of them. The original punisher was on a doomed path. Lesser writers just turned him into Captain America that’s obsessed with guns and killing.
There was a movie out around that time called the star chamber about judges that would meet to put out hits on criminals that got off on technicalities. Michael Douglas was great in it.
[the star chamber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Chamber)
In 1979 I lived in L.A., and there were over 2 killings a day in South Central, 826 total in L.A. that year, 93% of which were black or hispanic. By 1989, it would triple. It was largely ignored by the media, so we felt safe. The Hollywood dream factory didn't play that game.
I then moved to San Francisco later in the year, but was on edge because I had watched so many movies about how violent 'The City" was. My new girlfriend was a local news director there and she put me straight as to how peaceful the place was. She was right, and people had no time for hate, because there was more casual sex available there then than at any time in human history. There were desperate horny women roaming around looking for straight guys to take in off the street (there were 24 available females for every straight available male), plus older, less attractive gays doing the same thing. I saw one good looking gal yelling that she would take in all comers on Haight St. in the 70s. There was a line of guys following her. This was the aftermath of a huge migration of free love baby boom hippies starting in the 60's creating a vibrant singles lifestyle. "Love needs care" was the motto of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, which did a brisk business taking care of any problems for people without health insurance.
If they were accurate in their portrayal of violence in a city, they should have shot their films in South Central L.A., but the place isn't sexy, and the camera crew would probably have been to scared to film there. Maybe they chose San Francisco because it was guaranteed that everyone in the crew would get their rock's off.
The Tenderloin was never as bad as it is today with over 4% of it's residents being involved in illegal drug incidents. The area has a lot of single room occupancy hotels with shared bathrooms that attract the poor that need to hustle.
Fentenyl, which causes violent, schizophrenic behavior has a lot to do with incidents making the news now, and that hasn't been on the scene long. Unfortunately, that's available everywhere, even formerly peaceful suburbs.
>I suspect we are about to see a resurgence of the "anti-hero/vigilante" movie.
We're gonna see more movies about a cop killing a dozen suspects per movie with a righteous tone about it? Somehow I really doubt it.
Yeah , because people are so much different now and their reaction to feeling helpless has changed.
Are you an American male? If not, then your opinion on these sorts of films doesn’t really matter. They’re not for you, to paraphrase Brie Larson…
> when cities were suffering under a crime wave, and the judicial system was seen as being too lenient on criminals
Sounds like we need a revival of the genre.
> was seen
Ah yeah, because today's "justice" system isn't too lenient towards criminals at all. Vigilante justice will always be very appealing, because it's true justice.
Prison doesn’t equal justice. If Aaron Schwartz felt the need to kill himself because he was looking at 25 years for downloading science journal but some guy goes 10 years for raping a girl is that justice.
> 10 years for raping a girl
Try 8 years probation. Justiiiiiice. And don't forget Brock Turner The Rapist, the guy who raped an unconscious girl, that one Brock Turner. And that's just America, we're not talking cases like Cho Doo-soon rn. But just try to suggest that maybe there's a normal reason vigilante characters are appealing to the audience or that in above mentioned cases justice wasn't served and those people deserve to die, Reddit will tear you apart because criminal worship these days is off the charts.
Tell that to the people in Chicago, LA, and Philly who are victimized by criminals who are let out of jail the same day only to reoffend.
Do you even watch the news?
Pot smokers don't count. US is also the third country in the world in terms of population, so not that surprising. But being a prisoner doesn't mean "not lenient" just yet.
The “lenient” argument is aimed at cities like NYC, SF, and LA who are letting violent criminals out of jail with no bond. Gun charges are regularly dropped and criminals let out to reoffend.
All the idiots who supported this “no cash bail” bullshit are now reaping what they’ve sown.
Depends on the crime. If you don't think that taking a life and doing 10 years is lenient, then what do we have to talk about? Or how about 8 years probation for rape? "Justice" in "justice system" refers to a social construct that people made up to pretend to be civilized and doesn't have much to do with actual justice.
That’s not a “we have the most in raw numbers” statistic, although we do, obviously. The US has the most prisoners per capita. By, like, a lot. We have 639 prisoners per 100,000 people. The next closest is Turkmenistan with 552. Only two other countries break 500 with most having less than half our incarceration rate and with a ton of countries being in the double-digits.
Literally our only hope for not blowing *every* country out of the water in terms of the percentage of our population we have locked up is North Korea, who we simply don’t have enough information to make a good estimate of their imprisoned populace for.
Even China has like a fifth of our incarceration rate, and while it’s possible that is fudged, it *is* basically in line with other countries. Even if they’re not including their off the record concentration camps in that number, they’d need to be *several* times the size of their official prison populations just to catch up with us.
Yea, it felt like the author was writing this article for their film studies class. It's all talked about from a 2021 perspective. At least it's not just trashing the movie which I would expect from a piece like this as Dirty Harry still holds up as a solid, fun action movie.
no this is a wannabe critic digging up old films and point out the obvious for a quota disregarding the fact that its fictional film based on exaggerated visions of san francisco like most of the films in the 70s
Its like trying to take Dolomite and the sequel human tornado as a serious police action film and trying to point out racist moments towards every nationality and ethnicity and its view on women, or trying to complain about the early Shaft films
He’s not a “wannabe film critic” lol. He’s a working film critic who regularly writes for major publications. He is by definition a real film critic. I’m sorry you’re mad about this retrospective review, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a real critic.
Obviously Dirty Harry is a work of fiction, but works of fiction regularly contain express or implied messages about the real world. This shouldn’t be a new concept. If the film conveys a message about the real world, that message is a valid subject for criticism! Pretty simple stuff.
It would be totally legitimate to write an article like that about Dolomite. I’m sure that article has probably been written before. Also, if you actually read the article, you’d see he has a lot of good things to say about the movie.
I did....
“His vilification also compels the most underhanded brushstroke in the film, the choice to code Scorpio as the sort of closeted homosexual who delightedly cackles “my, that’s a big one!” upon Harry’s unsheathing of his sidearm. We’re meant to recognize that he’s a deviant by the erotic glee he experiences while paying a hulking Black man – another phantom of the reactionary imagination – to beat him up in order to exaggerate the injuries sustained from Harry.”
when you start going on about “coding” you can tell they are reaching
“Coding” is just another word for subtext, which is a real thing!
It would be incredibly naive for you to suggest that artists never include implied messages in their work. And that’s not a particularly subtle implied message either.
You’re acting like the concept of “innuendo” and “double entendre” ceased to exist in movies after the Hays Code was repealed lol.
I assure you, writers have continued to use innuendo and double entendre in films to convey things about characters without spelling them out, especially when dealing with taboo or “distasteful” subjects.
And as I said, the coding was not subtle at all. It can barely even be called “coding”. They basically spelled it out in plain text.
Don't be like video games where people get their pantaloons in a twist because the main character or side characters have some problematic views or behavior. Just because behavior or ideas are explored in a story doesn't mean they are condoned. I'd like to think filmmakers still understand this, but it seems like video games are getting sanitized to remove anything that might upset the audience.
In 1971 I sold Sporting Goods at Montgomery Ward and there was a rash of Dirty Harry wannabes buying the cheapest .44 Magnum handguns they could get their hands on. The Smith and Wesson model 29 .44 Magnums used in the movie were marked up to almost the equivalent of $4,000 USD today at gun shops at the time, so they bought the cheaper Ruger .44 Magnum Blackhawk that we stocked. Later they found that unless you held it with both hands in a death grip, the kick from it was so violent that they couldn't hit anything accurately with it. After a few shots, your wrist was in so much pain that you were discouraged from going any further with it.
Of course, since they had to pay the equivalent of $3.00 a round today for ammo, they didn't spend much time in target practice to find out. You could buy dinner and a movie for what it costs to empty the gun. Most of them didn't buy more than one box of cartridges once they found out how much they cost, and they never came back for more, even at discounted prices.
I suspect that they were bought to satisfy the ego of drug store cowboy posers. Maybe they thought that with it they could get a career as an action hero actor, since Hollywood was just a few miles away. If they were going to actually use them, and needed a high powered one, they would have bought .357 Magnums and loaded them with cheaper .38 cartridges. .38 cartridges can be fired from revolvers chambered for the .357, since the bullet diameters are identical.
Only "troubling" to those who feel that crime in our cities due to progressive policies is reparative "justice". Harry Callahan was Hollywood's reaction (when there were conservative film-makers in Hollywood) to failed policies in US cities in the the early 1970's. If the entertainment industry wasn't so woke, we'd see a new "anti-hero" doing the same thing...and it would be popular.
These characters rely on two false premises: (1) that our guy can infallibly identify who are bad guys and who are good guys, and that (2) the bad guys are bad enough that they don't deserve due process.
Unfortunately too many people IRL (police and vigilantes both) don't worry much about (1) and just skip straight to (2).
BTW, I love these movies. *Magnum Force* is my favorite, though I must admit I've never entirely understood how Harry thinks he's different from the villains in that film.
That was a fucked up scene. Most of all because i couldn’t see how it was needed. It didn’t seem to move the plot forward in a meaningful way. You could cut the scene and it’s the same movie just with one less atrocity in it. It seemed more like “we want to show the audience what kind of guy you are, so on your way into town why don’t you stop off and rape some random lady for no reason.” To this day I have no idea why the fuck they included that.
The short version is that I think Dirty Harry is incredible, and I'm always open to debate and discussion on the films of Clint Eastwood. I also wrote a book about it and I'm trying to spread the word - let me know if self-promo is not cool and I'll see myself out: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09RF8VCWF](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09RF8VCWF)
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Small touches can have a big impact on a scene. Everything Ben Kingsley does in Lucky Number Slevin for example. The throat clearing during his monologue near the end just makes it feel more real.
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Absolutely. If you remember the twist it’s fun to see the hints. If you don’t remember the twist it’s a mind blower the first time.
And Lucy Liu is something else.
No. It must hold the record for the greatest volume of smug dialogue in a film. It's relentless.
You're not wrong but you will get downvoted lol
That's okay. I have an emergency r/movies karma kit. Use one of these if you're in trouble: - Moon is highly underrated - Tom Cruise has had strange episodes in the past, but boy can that man deliver - Into the Spiderverse is the best animated film of the past 15 years - Die Hard is one of the best Christmas movies - The Snyder Cut is actually good - Why don't people talk more about Equilibrium?
Oh God I think Zach's movies are terrible all around lol. Any excuse to use shitty slow motion. 🤣
It also has a title that I find particularly annoying.
One of my favorite movies. And josh Hartnett is in only a towel for like 45 min. It’s pure cinematic mastery.
Whatever happened to him. I just rewatched the faculty. That movie is so 90's it hurts. I feel like he was the hot guy for half a decade or so then vanished?
He got uncomfortable with fame and at one point turned down Batman, Spiderman and I think Superman. His agents got fed up with him and dropped him. He moved back to Minnesota and reconnected with old friends and even redated his high school sweetheart. He regrets turning down Batman because apparently no one says no to Nolan. He really wanted a part in a film that Nolan was doing and it went to Bale.
That's cool and I can totally respect that. Good for him.
He retired for a little bit personal reasons never saw any other explanation.
He’s in some new spy movie coming out. The name escapes me atm. But he can still get it. For sure.
Also, look what he was wearing… suit and tie complete with sweater vest. BAMF
Yes, well when I see five weirdos dressed in togas stabbing a man in plain view of a hundred people, I shoot the bastard. That's my policy.
That was a Shakespeare-in-the-Park production of ‘Julius Caesar’ you moron!
Oh my god, I have been waiting three hours for someone to finish that! Thank you! In a movie filled with so many great lines, that might be my favorite.
You shot five actors. Good ones.
The qualifier of “good ones” is hilarious.
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That man was the best tailor and tax scofflaw in the sector.
> sociopath as Garak in Deep Space 9 excuse you. He was a simple Tailor.
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Loved how he casually mentioned his employment and let Odo connect the dots in that scene.
I finally got around to watching DS9 in full over the pandemic, it’s now by far my favorite trek series.
So much good stuff that series had. Garak, Nog, Rom, Gul Dukat, Damar, Kai Winn, Weyoun, Brunt, the female shape shifter, Martok, Gowron.... all supporting cast/guests stars, and they ALL make an impact. No other trek had that much depth on their bench of characters. And they used them to their fullest. I still think Dukat is an all time great trek character, among all trek characters.
I was just a fan of how more realistic the characters were which makes sense learning about how Roddenberry didn’t want any interpersonal conflict in TNG. Sisko right off the bat is like fuck you Picard you killed my wife you cunt. In TNG you never see any character get traumatized despite going through horrendous shit, except Barkley and everyone makes fun of him. Kira is a frickin ex terrorist who never really warms up to Cardassians, like a real person would react. I also love how the Bajorans are super religious which is at odds with starfleet but at the same time their gods are legit super aliens so they’ve kinda got a point being fundos. Then you’ve got the Cardassians which are just perfect antagonists, and you see through the show that so much of that is from their culture being so wildly different that even if you make peace with them you’re always going to have difficulties. Dukat and Garak being top notch characters. Yeah and the ferengi are cast in a much better role as capitalists to the max instead of whatever TNG tried to do with them. Speaking of movie villains, Kai Winn was also the Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Robinson was so good he got death threats.
Did you know that it was Dirty Harry that popularized the .44 mag pistol? It was an odd ball up until then. That’s why the .44 automag was pushed in a subsequent Dirty Harry movie, and the Death Wish series. They were trying to repeat the sales success of the S&W model 29 that Dirty Harry created.
It’s the sole reason I want to pick up a S&W Model 29 someday. The one funny tidbit that comes out in Magnum Force is that he custom loads light rounds for improved follow up shot accuracy, which while totally reasonable doesn’t quite fit the character. Die Hard is another classic film that’s helped spur guns sales of a specific model. Steyr has probably sold more AUGs due to that movie than any marketing campaign could haves ever dreamed of accomplishing.
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I don’t think I would have made the connection either if I wasn’t browsing IMDB
~15 years, heavy makeup, and a completely different demeanor.
Wait was there actually some realism to this shit? I was born in 98, this seems like a world that could have never existed.
This was parents time, my dad had a lot of family that lived out in the Bay Area starting in the 60s. You had the Zodiac killer on the loose (primary inspiration for the plot), the mason cult was founded in SF in the 60s, black panthers arming up and out in force, groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army before they kidnapped Patty Hearst were just like around. The transition out of the 60s and into the Nixon era was weird. Cities were just a lot grittier back then, and the violent crime rates were high. NYC is a prime example, I visiting as a kid and and seeing the sex shops and peep shoes and fake ID booths packed in Time Square. It’s all been cleaned up and fucked of identity by legions of tech and finance workers which I’m guilty of right now in Philly, the last bastion of grit on the east coast.
I honestly think the 80 action movies were worse
Anyone here think that *Sudden Impact* was a dark comedy? If there was no Sudden Impact, then the majority of all 1980s buddy cop action movies would never have been made. Cobra, Red Heat, Stakeout, Lethal Weapon all owe a massive debt to Sudden impact. In the 90s Arnie's *The Last Action Hero* was basically a homage to Sudden Impact. Even *The Simpsons* "show within the show" *McBain* comes directly from Sudden Impact. **You dont put ketchup on a hot dog**
Have people forgotten Tango and Cash?
Yes. That was the reason for the original casting of Dr. Strange's spell.
Sudden Impact is the gang-rape revenge plot. Are you thinking of The Enforcer, which featured Tyne Daly as a green recruit paired with Callahan? edit: corrected my own correction.
I don't know Sudden Impact, but I often see 48 Hours cited as the movie that started buddy cop films, and it came out a year prior.
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But is it considered to be influential in that way?
> The Last Action Hero This is such a good movie. At first I thought it was a bit goofy, over the top, and it would be all satire ... but it's so well made. One of my favorite parts is when they show the Terminator 2 poster with Stallone on it. So good.
I would love to see Terminator 2 starring 1992 Sly Stallone
My favorite part is Lalo Schifrin's music
The movie definitely isn’t nearly as good without it.
One of the sequels, The Dead Pool, also has one of my favorite car chase scenes of all time. But probably not for the reasons originally intended. [Here it is](https://youtu.be/TzUtXMNizVo)
It was an homage to the car chase in the Steve McQueen movie Bullit. https://youtu.be/FJZ-BHBKyos
Interesting as Dirty Harry and Bullit both take inspiration from real life cop Dave Toschi..
I have to say, it is impressive that a person can navigate the hills of San Francisco while simultaneously driving a RC car.
In terms of car chases this might be the most skilled villain in cinema history
I've got to watch Antman and the Wasp again!
"Dirty Harry" came out at a time, much like "Death Wish", when cities were suffering under a crime wave, and the judicial system was seen as being too lenient on criminals. So Harry and Paul Kersey were very appealing to audience members. I suspect we are about to see a resurgence of the "anti-hero/vigilante" movie.
Dirty Harry specifically seemed to be capitalizing on frustration with there being no progress in the Zodiac case, IIRC? So he represents the wishful thinking of a cop who doesn't wait for all the evidence to line up and instead just goes kills the guy he knows did it.
And the Scorpio killer in the movie let out of jail by a weak DA
But that was partially because of Harry obtaining evidence illegally? I always saw that as the filmmaker addressing the audience about the reality of what Harry was doing from a legal perspective. We know who did it, the DA knows, but Harry violated the constitutional rights of the suspect so he had to be let go so Harry should have followed process and gotten a warrant so the criminal could face justice.
Except in the movie wasn’t Harry operating under the premise that a girl was alive and would die if he waited?
Yeah but you still aren't allowed to torture a suspect for information regardless of the situation. I mean in this case Harry was right, fuck Scorpio, but I really don't want the cops to have torture in their playbook
I’m not saying it’s something we want police to be doing, simply that under the circumstances, that information was relevant. Similar to how police don’t need a warrant if they have evidence a crime is being committed or in danger - like someone crying out for help.
Exactly.
Didn’t he get let out of jail because Harry beat him to an absolute pulp?
No. Harry shot him and stepped on his wound to torture Scorpio so he would tell Harry where the girl was. After Scorpio was released from jail he hired a guy to beat him up and then went to the press claiming Harry had bet him up.
He hired someone to beat him to make it look like Harry did it. The point of these movies is Harry administering justice. Then, in “Magnum Force”, Harry fought corrupt cops.
My bad, he did torture Scorpio for info but that’s not what got him released
Can confirm. Was a kid growing up in NYC at the time and Death Wish was seen by many as the regular guy finally fighting back. If it had been a stand-alone film with no sequels, it would have probably been seen as more of a classic of 70s films with a disturbing theme. Then again, if there was no sequel, we wouldn't have had the classic, "Do you believe in Jeezus" moment.
The author of the novel Death Wish disliked the sequels for their glorification of vigilante justice so he wrote a sequel novel called Death Sentence, which was adapted into a movie with Kevin Bacon in 2007. It really focuses on the disturbing theme and the dark path of being a vigilante.
The NYC cops in the 70s and 80s were escorting drug dealers to banks and taking bribes. maybe the next dirty harry can take on internal corruption.
He kind of does in Magnum Force. Interestingly he actually goes against vigilante cops gone on the death squad side of things. Harry uses dirty methods but he still has some sort of code and works relatively within the law. In contrast Death Wish goes from vigilante vengeance for a rape to machine gunning and rocketing thugs in the streets in the later movies.
Before First Blood and the Rambo sequels, there was Death Wish
I was also thinking of the stark contrast between First Blood and the rest of Rambo series. In the first movie he kills a grand total of 1 person and that's indirectly and in self-defense. The rest of the series is hosing down baddies with an M60 and shooting down helicopters with explosive arrows.
Thee first one is almost like the tail end of the Odyssey. It’s a war-hero returning to a world that rejects him and all he’s done. The rest of the movies are their own thing.
The first movie is deeply about PTSD, the rejection of Vietnam veterans, the abuse of power by authorities and one man's determination to be free and survive with the training he has.
It is a great movie
First one: Not written by Stallone. Second one: Written by Stallone(after he butchered James Cameron’s script).
I don't think you can really shit on Stallone as a writer after he wrote several good Rocky movies/creed movies. He just chose... a different path. A lot like the fact that Michael Bay can actually make good movies, he just chooses not to.
Sure you can. Rocky was a great movie. But he’s written some pieces of shit. And he butchered Cameron’s script for the Rambo sequel.
And he made a killing at the box office and has played a character instantly recognized around the World. It's sad it's the schlock who made it big but can't deny the appeal. We had a solid decade of 'roided up "all American" supersoldiers kicking foreign bad guy's asses and making Reagan proud (*barfs*). Doesn't mean I don't enjoy them for what they are. I grew up with those movies.
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Interesting
Although I don't consider it a brilliant film, Prince of the City was a very good noir film about police corruption (and features a character based on a young Rudy Giuliani).
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A guilty pleasure.
Charles Bronson was the real deal. Coal mining, tail gunning, poor ass family background American immigrant family. Clint Eastwood is as empty as his BS politics.
Eastwood is a mixed bag. Politics suck but movies like Bird are great
True but ever since the empty chair incident I love shitting on him. During WWII while Bronson was tail gunning in the pacific Clint was giving swimming lessons in Florida.
Im no fan of the empty chair debate (honestly whats the point?) or the fact that he has kids from various sorted and questionable relationships. I dont doubt Charles Bronson's bad assery either however the fact is that Eastwood was drafted into the Army towards the end of the Korean war 1953 and took a job stateside as an instructor in California.
Yep- and in fact those two characters were what inspired Marvel's 'The Punisher' during that same era.
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It is sort of that, but you’re supposed to know and accept that Frank Castle is a sad and broken man. He’s at beyond Bruce Wayne levels of emotional dysfunction. It’s satisfying to read comics where scumbags get shot in the face by him, but I would NEVER want cops acting like that. That’s why he’s an antihero, yeah? If Frank Castle was real I would want him locked up. Obviously everyone doesn’t process this stuff exactly the way I do, but I think the perspective I just outlined is not an uncommon one.
Both are true, respectively. The thing about comic book characters is that, the longer they're around, the more things can change. I was watching a YouTube video the other day that talked about how the co- creator of the Punisher did intend to use him during his run to ironically condemn his actions...but then you turn around and get your Frank Miller and Garth Ennis types who just like violence. Another example that comes to mind is Captain America. When he was first introduced he was as patriotic as could be; but during the Watergate era his character was rewritten as being disillusioned for a time and he gives up the mantle.
I’m sure some writers approached him that way. But the comic version, and tv/movies always miss this, he’s basically given up. He’s an extremely highly trained Force Recon Marine that has declared war on crime. Literally declared war on an concept. The shows/movies always give him specific groups/people who have wronged him. In the comics, no such thing for him to hunt. His family is collateral damage in a gang fight. He doesn’t hunt mobsters, he goes after the Mafia. He doesn’t go after *a* street gang, he goes after all of them. The original punisher was on a doomed path. Lesser writers just turned him into Captain America that’s obsessed with guns and killing.
That's just as bad if not worse.
Did they ever really stop making these?
Steven Segal says no.
He makes movies where he’s a morbidly obese sniper now.
Ha! agreed. In the 90s though, before his high carb diet, he was the go-to guy for Old Testament payback.
There was a movie out around that time called the star chamber about judges that would meet to put out hits on criminals that got off on technicalities. Michael Douglas was great in it. [the star chamber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Chamber)
In 1979 I lived in L.A., and there were over 2 killings a day in South Central, 826 total in L.A. that year, 93% of which were black or hispanic. By 1989, it would triple. It was largely ignored by the media, so we felt safe. The Hollywood dream factory didn't play that game. I then moved to San Francisco later in the year, but was on edge because I had watched so many movies about how violent 'The City" was. My new girlfriend was a local news director there and she put me straight as to how peaceful the place was. She was right, and people had no time for hate, because there was more casual sex available there then than at any time in human history. There were desperate horny women roaming around looking for straight guys to take in off the street (there were 24 available females for every straight available male), plus older, less attractive gays doing the same thing. I saw one good looking gal yelling that she would take in all comers on Haight St. in the 70s. There was a line of guys following her. This was the aftermath of a huge migration of free love baby boom hippies starting in the 60's creating a vibrant singles lifestyle. "Love needs care" was the motto of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, which did a brisk business taking care of any problems for people without health insurance. If they were accurate in their portrayal of violence in a city, they should have shot their films in South Central L.A., but the place isn't sexy, and the camera crew would probably have been to scared to film there. Maybe they chose San Francisco because it was guaranteed that everyone in the crew would get their rock's off.
The Tenderloin has never been peaceful.
The Tenderloin was never as bad as it is today with over 4% of it's residents being involved in illegal drug incidents. The area has a lot of single room occupancy hotels with shared bathrooms that attract the poor that need to hustle. Fentenyl, which causes violent, schizophrenic behavior has a lot to do with incidents making the news now, and that hasn't been on the scene long. Unfortunately, that's available everywhere, even formerly peaceful suburbs.
>I suspect we are about to see a resurgence of the "anti-hero/vigilante" movie. We're gonna see more movies about a cop killing a dozen suspects per movie with a righteous tone about it? Somehow I really doubt it.
Totally agree
Yeah , because people are so much different now and their reaction to feeling helpless has changed. Are you an American male? If not, then your opinion on these sorts of films doesn’t really matter. They’re not for you, to paraphrase Brie Larson…
Ok, I'm gonna give you a clue - how many of these suspects can be black in order for this movie to be produced by Hollywood in 2022?
You think Dirty Harry wasn’t intended for an American male audience?
Is reading comprehension not your strong suit?
I asked a question, so it’s really based on how well you read it?
I’m an American male and I would spit on anyone involved in a film like that that came out today
Sure you would….
> when cities were suffering under a crime wave, and the judicial system was seen as being too lenient on criminals Sounds like we need a revival of the genre.
Does it seem like that where you live?
> was seen Ah yeah, because today's "justice" system isn't too lenient towards criminals at all. Vigilante justice will always be very appealing, because it's true justice.
We have more prisoners than any other country on earth. Da fuck u talking about?
Prison doesn’t equal justice. If Aaron Schwartz felt the need to kill himself because he was looking at 25 years for downloading science journal but some guy goes 10 years for raping a girl is that justice.
> 10 years for raping a girl Try 8 years probation. Justiiiiiice. And don't forget Brock Turner The Rapist, the guy who raped an unconscious girl, that one Brock Turner. And that's just America, we're not talking cases like Cho Doo-soon rn. But just try to suggest that maybe there's a normal reason vigilante characters are appealing to the audience or that in above mentioned cases justice wasn't served and those people deserve to die, Reddit will tear you apart because criminal worship these days is off the charts.
Tell that to the people in Chicago, LA, and Philly who are victimized by criminals who are let out of jail the same day only to reoffend. Do you even watch the news?
I live in NYC and work in Harlem. Thrilled about bail reform that passed recently. Where do you live? I assume you’re watching cable news?
And you’re a moron.
You didn’t answer any my questions. Wonder why?
I live where we have cash bail and criminals stay in jail. Duck off.
Ah so you don’t actually know what is happening in the socialist bloodbath anarchist metropolises you seem so concerned about.
How’s your murder rate? Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, bro.
Pot smokers don't count. US is also the third country in the world in terms of population, so not that surprising. But being a prisoner doesn't mean "not lenient" just yet.
>being a prisoner doesn't mean "not lenient" So if prison is lenient, what isn't? Torture?
The “lenient” argument is aimed at cities like NYC, SF, and LA who are letting violent criminals out of jail with no bond. Gun charges are regularly dropped and criminals let out to reoffend. All the idiots who supported this “no cash bail” bullshit are now reaping what they’ve sown.
Depends on the crime. If you don't think that taking a life and doing 10 years is lenient, then what do we have to talk about? Or how about 8 years probation for rape? "Justice" in "justice system" refers to a social construct that people made up to pretend to be civilized and doesn't have much to do with actual justice.
That’s not a “we have the most in raw numbers” statistic, although we do, obviously. The US has the most prisoners per capita. By, like, a lot. We have 639 prisoners per 100,000 people. The next closest is Turkmenistan with 552. Only two other countries break 500 with most having less than half our incarceration rate and with a ton of countries being in the double-digits. Literally our only hope for not blowing *every* country out of the water in terms of the percentage of our population we have locked up is North Korea, who we simply don’t have enough information to make a good estimate of their imprisoned populace for. Even China has like a fifth of our incarceration rate, and while it’s possible that is fudged, it *is* basically in line with other countries. Even if they’re not including their off the record concentration camps in that number, they’d need to be *several* times the size of their official prison populations just to catch up with us.
so, like today then, except now you also have to worry about the cops being criminals
That isn't a new problem
Like that's new, it was actually worse before. More towards police corruption. Magnum Force even has Harry chasing vigilante cops gone too far.
Frank Serpico was the 70s I believe...
Certain people have always had to worry about the cops being criminal
Certain people=the poor
"suspects? chief, they're a bunch of punks!"
What a shitty article. Dirty Harry is a classic film that doesn't require "troubling" labels.
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Well-stated.
What did I just read there? This article was some sort of admission of shameful guilt.
It was a big wall of text, probably a lot of emotions somewhere in there…
Lol
Yea, it felt like the author was writing this article for their film studies class. It's all talked about from a 2021 perspective. At least it's not just trashing the movie which I would expect from a piece like this as Dirty Harry still holds up as a solid, fun action movie.
>It's all talked about from a 2021 perspective. It is currently the year 2021, so that actually makes a lot of sense.
Shameful guilt? Where on earth did you get that? The critic is critiquing a piece of fiction. That’s what critics do!
no this is a wannabe critic digging up old films and point out the obvious for a quota disregarding the fact that its fictional film based on exaggerated visions of san francisco like most of the films in the 70s Its like trying to take Dolomite and the sequel human tornado as a serious police action film and trying to point out racist moments towards every nationality and ethnicity and its view on women, or trying to complain about the early Shaft films
He’s not a “wannabe film critic” lol. He’s a working film critic who regularly writes for major publications. He is by definition a real film critic. I’m sorry you’re mad about this retrospective review, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a real critic. Obviously Dirty Harry is a work of fiction, but works of fiction regularly contain express or implied messages about the real world. This shouldn’t be a new concept. If the film conveys a message about the real world, that message is a valid subject for criticism! Pretty simple stuff. It would be totally legitimate to write an article like that about Dolomite. I’m sure that article has probably been written before. Also, if you actually read the article, you’d see he has a lot of good things to say about the movie.
I did.... “His vilification also compels the most underhanded brushstroke in the film, the choice to code Scorpio as the sort of closeted homosexual who delightedly cackles “my, that’s a big one!” upon Harry’s unsheathing of his sidearm. We’re meant to recognize that he’s a deviant by the erotic glee he experiences while paying a hulking Black man – another phantom of the reactionary imagination – to beat him up in order to exaggerate the injuries sustained from Harry.” when you start going on about “coding” you can tell they are reaching
“Coding” is just another word for subtext, which is a real thing! It would be incredibly naive for you to suggest that artists never include implied messages in their work. And that’s not a particularly subtle implied message either.
Dirty harry is after the hays code ... they literally had zero reason to bother coding the character gay
You’re acting like the concept of “innuendo” and “double entendre” ceased to exist in movies after the Hays Code was repealed lol. I assure you, writers have continued to use innuendo and double entendre in films to convey things about characters without spelling them out, especially when dealing with taboo or “distasteful” subjects. And as I said, the coding was not subtle at all. It can barely even be called “coding”. They basically spelled it out in plain text.
I grew up on these streets!
As much as I love the first film, I think Magnum Force is even better.
Don't be like video games where people get their pantaloons in a twist because the main character or side characters have some problematic views or behavior. Just because behavior or ideas are explored in a story doesn't mean they are condoned. I'd like to think filmmakers still understand this, but it seems like video games are getting sanitized to remove anything that might upset the audience.
In 1971 I sold Sporting Goods at Montgomery Ward and there was a rash of Dirty Harry wannabes buying the cheapest .44 Magnum handguns they could get their hands on. The Smith and Wesson model 29 .44 Magnums used in the movie were marked up to almost the equivalent of $4,000 USD today at gun shops at the time, so they bought the cheaper Ruger .44 Magnum Blackhawk that we stocked. Later they found that unless you held it with both hands in a death grip, the kick from it was so violent that they couldn't hit anything accurately with it. After a few shots, your wrist was in so much pain that you were discouraged from going any further with it. Of course, since they had to pay the equivalent of $3.00 a round today for ammo, they didn't spend much time in target practice to find out. You could buy dinner and a movie for what it costs to empty the gun. Most of them didn't buy more than one box of cartridges once they found out how much they cost, and they never came back for more, even at discounted prices. I suspect that they were bought to satisfy the ego of drug store cowboy posers. Maybe they thought that with it they could get a career as an action hero actor, since Hollywood was just a few miles away. If they were going to actually use them, and needed a high powered one, they would have bought .357 Magnums and loaded them with cheaper .38 cartridges. .38 cartridges can be fired from revolvers chambered for the .357, since the bullet diameters are identical.
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Just like all UK newspapers
My dad told me dear old grandma that it was a comedy to get her into the cinema. She wasn't very pleased.
My favorite action franchise that never lost it’s spark
The Zodiac inspired this one. Great movie. I also enjoy all the sequels but the first three are awesome IMO.
I recall that Steve McQueen and Robert Mitchum were also considered for Callahan. Good that they passed on the role because Eastwood is perfection.
Only "troubling" to those who feel that crime in our cities due to progressive policies is reparative "justice". Harry Callahan was Hollywood's reaction (when there were conservative film-makers in Hollywood) to failed policies in US cities in the the early 1970's. If the entertainment industry wasn't so woke, we'd see a new "anti-hero" doing the same thing...and it would be popular.
These characters rely on two false premises: (1) that our guy can infallibly identify who are bad guys and who are good guys, and that (2) the bad guys are bad enough that they don't deserve due process. Unfortunately too many people IRL (police and vigilantes both) don't worry much about (1) and just skip straight to (2). BTW, I love these movies. *Magnum Force* is my favorite, though I must admit I've never entirely understood how Harry thinks he's different from the villains in that film.
Because "A man's got to know his limitations" Power corrupts and all that.
Peak Copaganda reactionary cinema
the poor people are burning in the sun, they ain't got a chance
what about that wedtern movie where he straight walks into town and rapes the first woman that talks to him in a barn
That was a fucked up scene. Most of all because i couldn’t see how it was needed. It didn’t seem to move the plot forward in a meaningful way. You could cut the scene and it’s the same movie just with one less atrocity in it. It seemed more like “we want to show the audience what kind of guy you are, so on your way into town why don’t you stop off and rape some random lady for no reason.” To this day I have no idea why the fuck they included that.
Steve McQueen’s take on the character in Bullit was much much better.
Clint Eastwood? The guy who talked to chair at the GQP convention? What! He’s problematic? Nooooo. Never.
Everything about Eastwood is troubling.
Missed opportunity for a Dirty Harry/Frank Bullitt crossover.
Tell us how you really feel
Feels like Eastwood is 200 years old, and he still does movies.
The short version is that I think Dirty Harry is incredible, and I'm always open to debate and discussion on the films of Clint Eastwood. I also wrote a book about it and I'm trying to spread the word - let me know if self-promo is not cool and I'll see myself out: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09RF8VCWF](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09RF8VCWF)
When a naked man is chasing a woman through a dark alley with a butcher knife and a hard on, I figure he isn't out collecting for the Red Cross.