: Callahan must fight the forces of banal writing in this fifth, and final, Dirty Harry movie. Some rich people have started a dead pool game - making a list of celebrities who they think will die. The winner is the one to have all their celebrities die first. Unfortunately Director Peter Swan (Liam Neeson) ha a list where everybody is turning up dead real quickly. Can Callahan stop the killer before the last person on the list is killed - one Detective Callahan!!
Script and plot? Oh dear. Oh dearie me. Oh dear oh dear. The killer? Boring. None of the great neurotic ticks that Scorpio had. Instead he's straight out of a bad TV-movie-of-the-week. The final identity of the killer is just plain rubbish and uninteresting. Callahan is teamed up in ethnic minority land to solely have a partner who can spout some mysticism, and do karate. This partner is about as interesting, and has about as much charisma and acting ability, as a particularly dull brick that even other bricks find boring. That would all be bad enough, but then the script insults us, by spelling out certain things as, it seems, we are all imbeciles. Thank you Fink family for this - I never knew what R.I.P. stood for or what the phrase `15 minutes' referred to. What ever happened to your ability shown in `Dirty Harry'?
The film further denigrates itself with me, by feeling very aged. Ironically the originally `Dirty Harry' seems fresher than this. Maybe the script-writing Finks, and Director Buddy Van Horn, felt it was a good idea to firmly lock the film into a horrifically 80s New Romantic era. There's an awful pastiche of Guns'N'Roses that almost had me weeping - the film seems to attempt to mock the era but only succeeds in mocking itself. The camera work is quite sloppy, the set design weak, and the synthetic music is both tired and limp. Unsurprisingly his directing career went nowhere after this.
Eastwood alone saved me from lobbing a brick through the movie. He is working with substandard conditions, but he still fits into the Dirty Harry role with a great ease. Due to the material he has, his character lacks the wit and edge of former instalments and hr almost becomes a caricature of his previous self. Still Eastwood has great screen presence and helped soothe my irritation with his gravely delivery, weathered charm, and ease with himself.
I won't recommend `The Dead Pool' to anyone. It's an insult to films and to the Dirty Harry series. It's got nothing going for it, with a lot going against it. I watched this so now you don't have to. Very poor. 1.5/10.
Script and plot? Oh dear. Oh dearie me. Oh dear oh dear. The killer? Boring. None of the great neurotic ticks that Scorpio had. Instead he's straight out of a bad TV-movie-of-the-week. The final identity of the killer is just plain rubbish and uninteresting. Callahan is teamed up in ethnic minority land to solely have a partner who can spout some mysticism, and do karate. This partner is about as interesting, and has about as much charisma and acting ability, as a particularly dull brick that even other bricks find boring. That would all be bad enough, but then the script insults us, by spelling out certain things as, it seems, we are all imbeciles. Thank you Fink family for this - I never knew what R.I.P. stood for or what the phrase `15 minutes' referred to. What ever happened to your ability shown in `Dirty Harry'?
The film further denigrates itself with me, by feeling very aged. Ironically the originally `Dirty Harry' seems fresher than this. Maybe the script-writing Finks, and Director Buddy Van Horn, felt it was a good idea to firmly lock the film into a horrifically 80s New Romantic era. There's an awful pastiche of Guns'N'Roses that almost had me weeping - the film seems to attempt to mock the era but only succeeds in mocking itself. The camera work is quite sloppy, the set design weak, and the synthetic music is both tired and limp. Unsurprisingly his directing career went nowhere after this.
Eastwood alone saved me from lobbing a brick through the movie. He is working with substandard conditions, but he still fits into the Dirty Harry role with a great ease. Due to the material he has, his character lacks the wit and edge of former instalments and hr almost becomes a caricature of his previous self. Still Eastwood has great screen presence and helped soothe my irritation with his gravely delivery, weathered charm, and ease with himself.
I won't recommend `The Dead Pool' to anyone. It's an insult to films and to the Dirty Harry series. It's got nothing going for it, with a lot going against it. I watched this so now you don't have to. Very poor. 1.5/10.