Dirty Harry

Dirty Harry probably doesn’t need an introduction. This movie came out in 1971 and is a classic. Clint Eastwood stars as San Fransisco police inspector Harry Callahan. When the movie came out it caused a lot of commotion because of the violence used by Callahan. in the movie Harry is chasing a psychopath killer nick names Scorpio and both use excessive violence. The only difference is that Scorpio kills innocent people and Harry only kills criminals in firefights defending himself. Criminals that surrender are arrested, not shot.So Harry is a cop that uses excessive violence only when provoked and then shows very little regret for the criminals that he kills with his Magnum 44 when they start shooting at him. When Harry starts shooting he shoots to kill and effectively becomes judge and executioner. Compared to todays standards it is all relatively mild, more people are shot and killed in your average action movie without causing much commotion. As a police officer Harry Callahan is obviously a most disturbing character but as an abstraction of the action hero fighting absolute evil personified by trigger happy criminals you can root for him. Harry answers the excessive violence of the criminals with equally excessive violence and once egaged in a gun fight he is not overly concerned about bringing them to court. The character is not called Dirty Harry for nothing. Still the movie works, mainly because of the extremely evil nature of scorpio and at the root of Harry’s motives is his desire to protect innocent civilians against criminals.