Double Feature

Happy Mother’s Day

Let’s talk Dirty Harry

DIRTY HARRY (1971) / MAGNUM FORCE (1973)



I recall writing extensively about Dirty Harry, especially in comparison to the French Connection, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I guess it’s lost with the old CS. Sadness. I’ll keep it brief then. Dirty Harry is a proponent of the victims rights. Over the decades, a lot has been discussed and debated in regards to suspect rights. Those are very important. It keeps corrupt cops in check — at least in theory. But there needs to be a balance in the two. We can’t protect the suspects to the extent that it’ll harm the victim, or worse, create new victims. Dirty Harry does a wonderful job of tackling that subject.

Unfortunately, that message didn’t come across in 1971, and so, Clint Eastwood responded with Magnum Force. Here, Dirty Harry goes up against a group of vigilante traffic cops who rather murder than go through the legal system. It’s a peculiar movie because of all the Dirty Harry’s it’s the only one to be a straight-up action films. There’s a lot of silliness. Entertaining silliness. But silliness. However, when the story is in focus, it delivers. It’s also the only Dirty Harry to dabble in Harry’s personal life and show his softer side. It’s my personal favorite in the series. You could argue the original is the better one cause it’s the most in-your-face about its mission statement, but this sequel is more interesting and entertaining.


THE ENFORCER (1976) / SUDDEN IMPACT (1983)



“Do ya feel lucky?”
“Man’s got to have limitations.”
“Go ahead. Make my day.”

That Harry sure had catchphrases.

In the Enforcer, Harry is forced to have a lady partner. Outrageous! In Sudden Impact, the one Eastwood directed, the villain is a rape victim turned serial killer. I get that Dirty Harry was a brand name by this point, but neither one of these functioned well as Dirty Harry’s. If anything, the Dirty Harry formula hurt both of them. They had to sacrifice story for Harry’s shenanigans. Sudden Impact suffered of this the most. It feels like you’re watching two completely different movies mashed together. Both are ultimately entertaining, but if there was ever an argument to reboot the franchise with Hugh Jackman, these are your prime examples.

FIREFOX (1982)



Not to be confused with the web browser, Firefox is a 1982 snoozefest starring Clint Eastwood, arguably his worst movie, about a Vietnam vet who steals a high-tech Russian jet plane. No clue why Eastwood wanted to be in this movie, let alone direct it, since he seems completely bored in front and behind the camera. An argument could be made for the aerial scenes, which were admittedly cutting age for its day, but Top Gun made it irrelevant only 4 years later. We could pretend this shit never existed.


FOXFIRE (1996)



Not to be confused with Firefox, the 1982 Clint Eastwood jet fighter movie, Foxfire is a 1996 teen drama starring Angelina Jolie in one of her iconic nude roles. She plays a drifter who befriends a group of high school girls that are getting sexually harassed by their science teacher. They fight back against him and form a strong bond afterwards, eventually forming a gang of sorts called Foxfire. Nude scene aside, this is actually a really good movie. It doesn’t tackle anything unique, you can find other comparable teen movies, but it captures those melancholy teen emotions exceptionally well.

You’re too young to have jerked off to Angelina Jolie. This and Gia (1998) are her “3AM with the door locked” classics. And maybe Hackers (1995).



Where do you rank, as both actor and director.

Boring and ugly too. Murky and dirty cinematography for no reason.

Doomsday SnoBorderZero

I've only seen Dirty Harry in this series. I'm slowly making my way through everything Clint Eastwood (hence why I suffered through Jersey Boys not long ago), so that will change soonish.

Yeah I was a bit disappointed when I caught up with the most recent version. Not bad exactly but I didn't have the same fun with it a lot of my peers seemed to.

In solidarity to SnoBorderZero’s vacation, I opted to watch a 3-hour movie, but it had to be something stupid, so naturally, that meant Brian De Palma’s gangster epic starring a coked out Al Pacino and written by an even more coked out Oliver Stone.

Don’t worry, I’ll get to Carlito’s Way eventually. Let’s first soak in Scarface.

Anyone familiar with Billy Corben’s Cocaine Cowboys series will know how it annihilated Scarface’s reputation as a cartoonishly over-the-top tax write off. This film, I’m afraid, is more true to life than people are willing to accept. Miami in the 1980’s was really this ridiculous.

That said, it has been ages since I’ve watched Scarface. This might have been the first time in adulthood that I’ve immersed in it. And my memory of it is different from what the movie is. Yeah, Al Pacino has a borderline offensive accent, and there are moments of De Palma silliness, but it plays out more as a crime drama than I had remembered or expected.

Have people acknowledged Oliver Stone’s script or even given him any proper credit for the film? This might be something worth looking into. Dracula ? PG Cooper ? Where you guys at?

Going into a 3-hour Scarface appeared to be a daunting task, but there is a ton of plot and character scenes. I was amazed by how much of a story there is in Scarface. We follow Tony Montana as he arrives in the States, gets out of the refugee camps, works in minimum wage, gets into the drug business, goes from low level to kingpin, how he goes mad and then gets killed. And I didn’t even get into the incest stuff. If Scarface was made today, it’d be a series on Netflix. Oliver Stone is coked out enough to write a hundred episodes.

Scarface is a bit of a sensory overload and that’s where it gets itself into trouble. De Palma is at his best when he relies on visuals, character emotions and music. That’s not really a good pairing with Oliver Stone’s information dump. One moment you get Tony Montana dealing with banks, police stings and political assassinations and the next moment Tony Montana is snorting mountains of cocaine and fighting off Bolivian assassins with a grande launcher. You can get whiplash watching Scarface. There should be a warning in the beginning.

Overall, it’s engaging. I’ll give it that. Is it good? Is it bad? I don’t know. I will ask this though. Who would you Fuck, Marry, Kill? Michelle Pfeiffer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio or the naked chick in bed with Steven Bauer?

I don’t think incest is in the Oliver Stone script (I could be wrong though). Only moment where it is brought up is at the end. I think it was De Palma that created that subplot. The way he shot and edited those Tony and Gina scenes (plus the music) are hilariously over-the-top and completely change the context of what’s going on. If De Palma had shot it as written, one could definitely argue that Tony didn’t want Gina in his world. As I said earlier, has anyone ever asked Oliver Stone about the movie itself? Any interview I’ve ever seen from Oliver Stone he just talks about going to Miami to do research (and a lot of coke). I don’t think I’ve ever seen Oliver Stone critique what De Palma did to his script.

God bless those Pre-Code perverts.