BEFORE: From one iconic San Francisco cop to another - again I have to own up to never having watched a film that just about "everyone" is familiar with. It's my personal daily cycle of shame, followed by redemption.
THE PLOT: A San Francisco cop with little regard for rules (but who always gets results) tries to track down a serial killer who snipes at random victims.
AFTER: About 18 minutes in, we're treated to the immortal line, where "Dirty" Harry Callahan asks a bank robber if he'd fired six shots, or only five - and says "you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?" It does NOT get any more classic than that. Like many classic movie lines, it often gets misquoted, and appears as "Do you feel lucky, punk?", in many parodies. That line from "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" about "stinkin' badges" often gets paraphrased incorrectly too...
I did a whole Clint Eastwood chain last year, but at the time I didn't have possession of this film - Turner Classic Movies ran it just a few months ago, and since I knew I had crime films coming up, I grabbed it, along with one of its sequels. That is the point of this exercise after all, to find the hidden (and not-so-hidden) gems of filmdom that I haven't seen, and this certainly qualifies.
Callahan tracks down the sniper that's terrorizing his city, but he does it without a little thing called a search warrant, so any evidence collected is ruled invalid - this goes a long way toward portraying Dirty Harry as the kind of cop who bucks the system, and gets the job done, but not always in the best way. Police procedures for the other guys, and you can't argue with results, but you've got to make the conviction stick.
I've got problems with the way that the killer is portrayed - at one point the cops point out that a criminal doesn't change his M.O., but the killer DOES show different habits throughout the film. First he's a sniper killing randomly, then he kidnaps a young woman and blackmails the city, and later in the film he's portrayed as more of a pedophile. Those are three very different types of crimes, from what I understand.
Another film which influenced the video-game "Grand Theft Auto 3" - specifically the "Payday for Ray" mission in the 2nd island of the game, which forces the player to drive a fast car between 4 ringing payphones in rapid succession, in order to meet with a police informant. The killer in this film makes Harry run between payphones before delivering a ransom payment, and the similarity is quite obvious.
Also starring John Vernon (Dean Wormer from "Animal House") as the mayor.
RATING: 5 out of 10 shell casings (the classic movie moment rates higher, but I'm not sure the surrounding movie is of the same "caliber")
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