When a mad man calling himself 'the Scorpio Killer' menaces the city, tough as nails San Francisco Police Inspector Harry Callahan is assigned to track down and ferret out the crazed psychopath.
Dirty Harry must foil a terrorist organization made up of disgruntled Vietnam veterans. But this time, he's teamed with a rookie female partner that he's not too excited to be working with.
A rape victim is exacting revenge on her aggressors in a small town outside San Francisco. "Dirty" Harry Callahan, on suspension for angering his superiors (again), is assigned to the case.
A gunfighting stranger comes to the small settlement of Lago and is hired to bring the townsfolk together in an attempt to hold off three outlaws who are on their way.
A hard-nosed, hard-living Marine gunnery sergeant clashes with his superiors and his ex-wife as he takes command of a spoiled recon platoon with a bad attitude.
Alcatraz is the most secure prison of its time. It is believed that no one can ever escape from it, until three daring men make a possible successful attempt at escaping from one of the most infamous prisons in the world.
Director:
Don Siegel
Stars:
Clint Eastwood,
Patrick McGoohan,
Roberts Blossom
Nun Sara is on the run in Mexico and is saved from cowboys by Hogan, who is preparing for a future mission to capture a French fort. The pair become good friends, but Sara never does tell him the true reason behind her being outlawed.
A hard but mediocre cop is assigned to escort a prostitute into custody from Las Vegas to Phoenix, so that she can testify in a mob trial. But a lot of people are literally betting that they won't make it into town alive.
In the year 1971, San Francisco faces the terror of a maniac known as Scorpio- who snipes at innocent victims and demands ransom through notes left at the scene of the crime. Inspector Harry Callahan (known as Dirty Harry by his peers through his reputation handling of homicidal cases) is assigned to the case along with his newest partner Inspector Chico Gonzalez to track down Scorpio and stop him. Using humiliation and cat and mouse type of games against Callahan, Scorpio is put to the test with the cop with a dirty attitude.Written by
commanderblue
Burt Lancaster turned down the lead role because he strongly disagreed with the violence of the story and with what he perceived to be its "right-wing" morals. See more »
Goofs
Throughout the first scene in the police station (where Harry first meets Chico), Harry is "drinking" from an empty coffee cup. See more »
Quotes
Harry Callahan:
Uh uh. I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've gotta ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?
See more »
Crazy Credits
During the opening credits, the word "Dirty" in the title is in brown as opposed to the rest of the credits' yellow. See more »
Alternate Versions
When screened on the cable TV channel, AMC, the first shootout was edited in such a way as to create a continuity error with Harry's "Did I shoot five times, or six?". In the edited version, his third shot is missing, as is his sixth shoot (which sends the robber crashing through a window). Thus, he only fires four times, not six, as he does in the unedited version. See more »
This stylish 1970s critique of the U.S. justice system is well known as a crime action drama, and is widely regarded as one of many breakthrough films for Clint Eastwood. Eastwood plays the same sort of character he typically plays - a likable tough guy with a powerful sense of justice and ice for blood. This Eastwood, however, has lost his wife to a drunk driver, some of his partners to murderous criminals, and some aspect of his sanity to his job. He's an inspector in the San Francisco police force's Homicide Division. The film is highly regarded for Eastwood's charismatic performance, for the boldness of the Dirty Harry character, and for the several spaghetti-western quotes uttered by Eastwood.
I have a slightly different take on this film. Dirty Harry was released in the same year as The French Connection - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067116/combined - a film partly based on real life detectives catching the feeling of police dealing with the hard realities of the drug trade in the big apple of the early 1970s. Dirty Harry - as cool as Eastwood's character may be - is a one-dimensional creature compared with Gene Hackman's Popeye Doyle. Something about Harry Callahan's political incorrectness resonates in a disturbing way with people who have only examined police work and the justice system through their televisions. The reality of this aspect of modern life is far less interesting, dramatic, and straightforward. And the critique of "American justice" is at least as powerfully made in the French Connection as it is here. Furthermore, The French Connection was an extremely innovative film, while Dirty Harry was a fairly typical stylized police-fantasy. The only explanations for the on-going popularity of this film, then, are Eastwood's charisma and the sheer entertainment value of this gutsy, gritty, hardcore crime drama.
Harry is on the trail of a serial killer played by the phenomenal character actor Andrew J. Robinson in his major film debut. Andy Robinson makes a great psycho, and, at times, appears so out-of-control (nicely contrasted with Eastwood's reptilian calm) that it is a wonder he didn't seriously injure himself during the shooting of the film. When Robinson abducts a young girl and buries her alive, extorting $200, 000 from the mayor's office, Harry uses some unconventional tactics to bring him to justice. This brings us slightly past the midpoint of the film, and just to the point where it accelerates into a first-rate action thriller.
While I think Dirty Harry is a very good film, and worth seeing at least a couple of times, I do not necessarily agree with the general opinion concerning the film. It is disappointing to me that this film did not make Andy Robinson the star that it helped to make Clint Eastwood into - especially since the range of characters and emotions these two men have shown themselves capable of is so disparate (in favor of Mr. Robinson). It is also surprising to me to see that the obvious connection (dare I say plagiarisn) between this film and the French Connection has been glossed over by film history so completely. In the same light, it bothers me that this film is rated so highly as compared with the French Connection. And finally, I am pleased that Dirty Harry is still a film that action fans enjoy, because unlike most of what the action genre produces today, this is a film with a message, and a subtle and hauntingly memorable intelligence.
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This stylish 1970s critique of the U.S. justice system is well known as a crime action drama, and is widely regarded as one of many breakthrough films for Clint Eastwood. Eastwood plays the same sort of character he typically plays - a likable tough guy with a powerful sense of justice and ice for blood. This Eastwood, however, has lost his wife to a drunk driver, some of his partners to murderous criminals, and some aspect of his sanity to his job. He's an inspector in the San Francisco police force's Homicide Division. The film is highly regarded for Eastwood's charismatic performance, for the boldness of the Dirty Harry character, and for the several spaghetti-western quotes uttered by Eastwood.
I have a slightly different take on this film. Dirty Harry was released in the same year as The French Connection - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067116/combined - a film partly based on real life detectives catching the feeling of police dealing with the hard realities of the drug trade in the big apple of the early 1970s. Dirty Harry - as cool as Eastwood's character may be - is a one-dimensional creature compared with Gene Hackman's Popeye Doyle. Something about Harry Callahan's political incorrectness resonates in a disturbing way with people who have only examined police work and the justice system through their televisions. The reality of this aspect of modern life is far less interesting, dramatic, and straightforward. And the critique of "American justice" is at least as powerfully made in the French Connection as it is here. Furthermore, The French Connection was an extremely innovative film, while Dirty Harry was a fairly typical stylized police-fantasy. The only explanations for the on-going popularity of this film, then, are Eastwood's charisma and the sheer entertainment value of this gutsy, gritty, hardcore crime drama.
Harry is on the trail of a serial killer played by the phenomenal character actor Andrew J. Robinson in his major film debut. Andy Robinson makes a great psycho, and, at times, appears so out-of-control (nicely contrasted with Eastwood's reptilian calm) that it is a wonder he didn't seriously injure himself during the shooting of the film. When Robinson abducts a young girl and buries her alive, extorting $200, 000 from the mayor's office, Harry uses some unconventional tactics to bring him to justice. This brings us slightly past the midpoint of the film, and just to the point where it accelerates into a first-rate action thriller.
While I think Dirty Harry is a very good film, and worth seeing at least a couple of times, I do not necessarily agree with the general opinion concerning the film. It is disappointing to me that this film did not make Andy Robinson the star that it helped to make Clint Eastwood into - especially since the range of characters and emotions these two men have shown themselves capable of is so disparate (in favor of Mr. Robinson). It is also surprising to me to see that the obvious connection (dare I say plagiarisn) between this film and the French Connection has been glossed over by film history so completely. In the same light, it bothers me that this film is rated so highly as compared with the French Connection. And finally, I am pleased that Dirty Harry is still a film that action fans enjoy, because unlike most of what the action genre produces today, this is a film with a message, and a subtle and hauntingly memorable intelligence.