Slippery Harry

Magnum Force is about a group of young, personable, attractive and overzealous young men who abuse the power entrusted to them by committing crimes in the name of law and security at the direction of their superior.  the story of Watergate?  Only metaphorically, because the young men in question are rookie patrolmen inspired by San Francisco's police commissioner and disillusioned by what they see as a permissive court system.  So they take the law into their own hands- killing off every variety of alleged criminal, from Mafiosi to any lesser crooks whose life-style offends their strong streak of Puritanism.

It is a measure of how far the social barometer has swung that Dirty Harry- yes, the same Dirty Harry of 1971's pro law-and-order blockbuster- is the man who finally wipes out these fascistic vigilantes.  It takes some slippery writing by co-screenwriters John Milius and Michael Cimino and a lot of manipulation by director Ted Post to persuade us that Clint Eastwood, as Harry, isn't dying to don a patrolman's uniform and join this chummy group of sharpshooters.  For, as Post and his screenwriters stack things, the victims of police extermination are painted as sweaty, gross, arrogant, hedonistic vermin, deserving of everything they get.  But in this latest post-Watergate movie, there are no good guys- only bad, worse and worser.  It is a cynical, hopeless, corrupt world in which Dirty Harry suddenly finds himself forced into moderation.  Of course, Harry still believes that cops ought to rub out killers as soon as they pull their guns- but systematic liquidation outside the law?  That's where he draws the line.  -Paul D. Zimmerman

Original text appeared in Newsweek, Jan. 7, 1974