Dirty Harry (1971)

Calificación de los usuarios:

7.9/10   

Director:

Don Siegel

Escritores:

Harry Julian Fink (screenplay) &
Rita M. Fink (screenplay) ...

Fecha de Lanzamiento:

23 diciembre 1971 (USA)

Género:

Acción | Crimen | Suspenso

Frase comercial:

You don't assign him to murder cases, You just turn him loose.

Plot:

A San Francisco cop with little regard for rules (but who always gets results) tries to track down a serial killer who snipes at random victims.

Plot Keywords:

Dirty Harry | Sniper | Ransom | Police | City

Premios:

1 nomination

Comentarios de los usuarios:

"Harry Hates Everybody!"

Reparto

Clint Eastwood	...	Insp. Harry Callahan
Harry Guardino	...	Lt. Al Bressler
Reni Santoni	...	Insp. Chico Gonzalez
John Vernon	...	The Mayor
Andrew Robinson	...	Scorpio Killer (as Andy Robinson)
John Larch	...	The Chief
John Mitchum	...	Insp. Frank DiGiorgio
Mae Mercer	...	Mrs. Russell
Lyn Edgington	...	Norma
Ruth Kobart	...	Bus Driver
Woodrow Parfrey	...	Mr. Jaffe
Josef Sommer	...	Dist. Atty. William T. Rothko
William Paterson	...	Judge Bannerman
James Nolan	...	Liquor Store Owner
Maurice Argent	...	Sid Kleinman (as Maurice S. Argent)

También conocida como:

Dead Right (USA) (original script title)
Harry, el sucio (Argentina) (Peru) (Spain) [es]

Duración:

102 min | Portugal:99 min (cut version)

País:

USA

Idioma:

Inglés

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Relación de Aspecto:

2.35 : 1

Sonido:

Mono

Clasificación:

Canada:13+ (Québec) | Canada:PG (Manitoba) | Canada:R (Nova Scotia/Ontario) | Iceland:16 | UK:X (original rating) | Finland:K-16 (1972) (cut) (re-rating after appeal) | Netherlands:12 (TV rating) | Netherlands:16 | France:-12 | UK:15 (2008) | Ireland:15 (re-rating) (2008) | Ireland:18 | Finland:K-15 (DVD rating) | Argentina:18 | Peru:18 | Norway:15 (DVD rating) | Australia:MA | Australia:R (original rating) | Finland:(Banned) (1972) | Italy:VM14 | New Zealand:R16 | Norway:16 (cut) | Norway:18 | Singapore:M18 | South Korea:18 | Spain:18 | Sweden:15 | UK:18 | USA:R | West Germany:16

Locaciones de Filmación:

Bank of America Building - 555 California Street, San Francisco, California, USA

Compañía:

Malpaso Company, The

Trivialidades:

In reality the police forces would never use a .44 Magnum as a standard issue weapon as it has an excessive recoil and over-penetration issues, greatly increasing the chances of a bullet going through targets and injuring bystanders.

Errores:

Continuidad: In the final bus scene, Callahan gets ready to jump onto the bus by walking to the far side of the rail bridge - when Scorpio looks up at him just before the bus reaches the bridge, you can see in the reflection of the windshield that Callahan is still standing on the near side of the bridge.

Citas:

[first lines]
Harry Callahan: Jesus.

Conexiones de Película:

Referenced in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (2006) (VG)

"Harry Hates Everybody!"

How radically different cinema history, and our collective consciousness, would have been if Frank Sinatra hadn't injured his hand before shooting started on "Dirty Harry". Sinatra was due to play Harry, but had to withdraw, clearing the way for Clint. Given Sinatra's unique brand of self-loathing, Harry would have been an uglier personality than Clint made him. As it is, Lieutenant Callaghan is an ornery anti-liberal cuss of a guy, but he is straight and likeable. Arguably, it was this characterisation which made Eastwood a megastar.

San Francisco in 1971 was ready for stardom itself. The West Coast love-in scene and the gay 'boom', together with McQueen's "Bullitt", raised awareness of San Francisco as an exciting liberal city with a photogenic skyline. The film's funky score by Lalo Schifrin is perfectly-judged, and spawned numerous imitators.

The central narrative concerns a lone nut who is trying to hold the city to ransom. He starts by murdering citizens to extort money from the mayor, then progresses to kidnapping children. This plays cleverly on the inchoate anxieties of Middle America, where law-abiding people were puzzled and alarmed at the 'crime wave' and the threat it posed to them and their families. Crime in the decades before the Kennedy assassination had been compartmentalised by Hollywood. Gangsters were bad, but they killed other gangsters. Now the danger was unpredictable, irrational - and solitary. The lone madman was as likely to strike against me or you as against an institution. Only a single-minded strong man, operating on the fringes of the rules, could combat this new terror.

Harry is a paradox. In one sense, he is an 'outlaw'. He has little respect for formal authority (in the opening minutes, we see him being rude to the mayor) and he carries a strictly non-regulation monster of a gun. Harry is openly racist and mutinous. And yet he is also deeply moral. He conforms to an unarticulated ethical code that is anglosaxon American. He protects the weak and confronts the wrongdoers, no matter how the odds are stacked against him. Indeed, the cowardly bureaucrats who will never reward him or promote him are able to exploit his profound decency. They send him on all the difficult, dirty jobs because they know that his sense of right and wrong won't allow him to walk away.

Early in the film, the famous bank robbery scene occurs. This has become so familiar that it hardly needs elaborating here, but to summarise, Harry foils an armed robbery using icy courage and grim humour - and his magnum handgun. The special brand of Eastwood humour recurs throughout the story (eg, the suicide jumper and the gay called 'Alice'). White anglosaxon America is encouraged to laugh at the undergroups which supposedly threaten it.

When the bad guy 'Scorpio' is cornered, he immediately starts bleating about his civil rights. This is meant to arouse our fury, because we have seen him callously destroying the lives of others, and here he is exploiting the protection of the state. To make matters worse, the state agrees with him. We see the DA and a judge explaining to Harry why the cogent evidence against Scorpio is inadmissible. Just exactly why the DA would call a meeting with a lowly policeman in order to explain department policy is far from clear, but the scene is thematically necessary. Scorpio is using the System against the decent, godfearing people who own it. The liberal apparatus is skewed if it lets a killer walk away scot-free.

There are some illogicalities about the plot. Such an important event as the cash drop is left to two cops working alone, when in reality there would be a massive covert operation. When Scorpio beats the rap, there is no public outcry or media storm, and he is allowed to get on with his anonymous existence virtually untroubled.

However, this hardly matters since the main thrust of the story is the coming showdown between Harry and the bad guy. As the climax approaches, Harry drops out of the police operation. Scorpio is at his manic worst on the hi-jacked school bus, alienating us nicely and suppressing any liberal twitches we may still be feeling. Then we see Harry, standing as upright and sturdy as the Statue Of Liberty ....