Dirty Harry: The Enforcer (1976)

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Dirty Harry: The Enforcer (1976)

5/10

Starring

Clint Eastwood

Directed by James Fargo

Here is a Dirty Harry movie where I felt the co-star was a bigger star than the star actor himself. It is not that Clint Eastwood didn’t put up a great performance as usual, which is the same old, same old Dirty Harry behavior that we are all used to, but in this “The Enforcer” his co-star and partner was a woman Tyne Daly, who held her own beside Harry and delivered such a masterful performance that it made it easy for me to overlook this crappy script.

The movie is not great, but just a lame excuse to do another Dirty Harry movie. The problem I had with the movie was the villains. In the first Dirty Harry we had Scorpio who was insane in so many ways. He was a serial killer with a one track mind. And would stop at nothing until he got the money he wanted off the government. It was then we got a taste of Dirty Harry.

In the second (Magnum Force) we had another bunch of insane cops, turning themselves to judge and jury as they went about town taking down all the bad guys that they could round up, again Harry had to step up to the case since one of his friend got caught in the crossfire.

Here we have a bunch of guys who have a weird and divided purpose, blowing up things and getting themselves taken out one after the other like rats. It was like from the beginning that had no chance against this duo, and in the end thanks to a bazooka, they didn’t.

I didn’t get to see the challenge like I did in the first Dirty Harry movie, and I also didn’t get to enjoy the chase like I did in the second, just a bunch of guys being crazy and a priest who is in the middle and not doing the right thing.

Then comes Inspector Kate Moore (Tyne Daly) who then gave the movie the spin that it needed, she was up to the task as Harry’s partner and even saved his life during the movie. She stole the show in the brief time that she was on screen and made the movie worth watching.

I would have loved this movie more if the script was well tuned to fit the Dirty Harry first two movies that I saw, where Harry had to think outside the box to survive, here he just had to have a good partner, who always knew how to save the day, when Harry was too busy being Harry.