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The Dead Pool (1988)

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73 comments in total

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15 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
Dirty Harry still has it, 24 marzo 2001

Author: smatysia (feldene@comcast.net) de Houston

Dirty Harry still has it. This film has all the mayhem, the violence, the wisecracks, the whole formula. Patricia Clarkson's delicate beauty is a good counterpoint to Eastwood's ruggedness. It was interesting to see actors like Neeson and Carrey paying their dues. When I first saw this film, I didn't realize that the "car chase" scene, running from the toy Corvette, was a spoof of Bullitt, but on viewing this time, I found the homage hilarious. No, this film isn't the equal of "Dirty Harry" but it's not bad at all for a fourth sequel.

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14 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
Last ''Dirty Harry'' And A Good One, 25 junio 2006

Author: ccthemovieman-1 de Lockport, NY, United States

This was the fifth and last "Dirty Harry" movie with Clint Eastwood playing the hero again, Inspector Harry Callahan, cleaning up the streets of San Francisco from all the scumbag criminals. I've always found "The Dead Pool" to be one of his best in this series.

It's entertaining with pretty taut suspense and always fun to go back and see a young Jim Carrey. It's always cool, too, to watch those little remote-control cars with bombs attached go speeding through the streets underneath automobiles. At an hour-and-a-half, there are no dry spots in this film, either.

The female lead, Patricia Clarkson, is not one of my favorites. Eastwood seems to like those skinny blonds. Evan Kim, playing "Harry's" new partner, "Al Quan," was a likable guy. Even Harry's slightly more low-key in this movie, his language more tame and he gets in a few comedic zingers as well. Carrey plays a totally-despicable drugged-out rock star but he doesn't last long in the film. Carry and Liam Neeson play low-life people and combine to put some sleaze into the story.

Despite the usual less-than-credible action scenes at the end (where the villains miss from point-blank range, etc.), this is still a very entertaining movie and one of my favorites among the "Dirty Harry" films. Clint went out in style with this film.

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16 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
Loved them all!!!, 4 marzo 2005
Author: fanaticita de San Francisco

Having just seen Dead Pool, the last of the Dirty Harry series, I have to say that I enjoyed this film as much as the other four. I don't have a favorite, I loved them all. Recently I became interested in Clint Eastwood's films and have seen a number of them including the westerns. Eastwood is an amazing guy. He has presence on the screen that is extraordinary. It's not that he is such a great actor, but I can't take my eyes off of him when he is in a scene. His face conveys such hysterical expression when he comes out with, "Swell!" or "Marvelous!" He's irreverent, gritty, rude, shoots criminals in the back, beats the sh-t out of them, antagonizes everyone, and so what. He gets the job done! I liked everyone in the cast even Patricia Clarkson and her nasal voice. Liam Neeson was great, sounding for all the world exactly like Ralph Fiennes. And the music in all five of the series was terrific -the best! What a treat!

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
"Enjoyable.", 17 noviembre 2004
Author: jamesraeburn2003 de Poole, Dorset

Tough San Fransisco cop "Dirty" Harry Callahan (Eastwood) is on the trail of a psychopathic killer who is obsessed with the works of British horror film director Peter Swan (Liam Neeson). Swan has developed a macabre but harmless game called "The Dead Pool", in which he drew up a list of local celebrities whom he believed would all die in nasty seemingly accidental ways. These include his harshest film critic Molly Fisher (Ronnie Claire-Edwards), drug addict rockstar Johnny Squares (Jim Carrey) and Inspector Callahan himself. The demented film buff proceeds to murder the people on the list one by one in horrific ways which correspond to Swan's movies. Callahan finds himself not only tracking down this crased psychotic, but also has to contend with various attempts on his life organised by a disgruntled crime boss whom Callahan put away and a new colleague, a Chinese American karate expert called Inspector Al Quan (Evan C Kim).

THE DEAD POOL is Eastwood's fifth and final incarnation as Dirty Harry to date. The series always reworked the seemingly routine premise of Callahan's unorthodox approach to police work, his dislike of workplace politics and his relationships with work colleagues. However, these are essential characteristics to the series no matter how much our film critics moan about them. A bit like how much the same old smutty seaside postcard humour is valuable to the Carry On films. If the filmmakers abandoned them they would lose out at the box office. THE DEAD POOL in itself has all the characteristics of it's predecessors and the action is plentiful and Eastwood is superb as always in one of his most famous roles. One of the best set-pieces involves a car chase through the streets of San Francisco with Callahan and Quan being chased by no other than a radio control car, only this is more than a harmless kid's toy, it's a bomb! The film is also memorable for featuring future stars Liam Neeson (who is excellent as the arrogant filmmaker) and Jim Carrey as the ill-fated rockstar before he went into making those overblown comedies like DUMB AND DUMBER.

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11 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Pool Of Dead Critics, 1 mayo 2006

Author: jldmp1 (jldmp1@aol.com) de United States

This was altogether too simple for the critics back in '88 -- the whole idea was to point the barrel of the joke right back at the criticism.

Whereas the previous Dirty Harry features sat on a platform of utter contempt for bureaucrats and political correctness, here it's expanded to contempt for journalists, and especially the subspecies of 'media critics'. As if they couldn't make it clearer, a 'movie critic' is murdered, and treated as an occurrence of 'death of celebrities by threes'.

Yes, this is explicitly about movie making; the previous four movies suffered from poor supporting casts that only got in the way of the narrative. Here Van Horn deliberately employs good actors to play bad genre roles and thus turns the series on its head.

Along the way, we get a nice comment on "Bullitt", this time deflating the over touted car chase with a gag: an explosives laden model '63 Z06 (instead of a fastback Mustang, to drive home the point).

By this time, the .44 Magnum is treated as a character, with a 'voice' that rolls off the cityscape like thunder...the bad guys run at the mere sight of it. To put the icing on the 'man with the biggest gun' motif, Clint dispatches the villain with an earlier one liner ("you're S.O.L.") and a movie prop harpoon. The elaborate conflation of sexual double entendre, humor and cowboy justice went soaring over many heads. Arnold wishes he was half this funny in "Last Action Hero".

Ah, we miss Harry...but his retirement to Carmel was both serendipitous and necessary. By the end of this, he's killed off every cartoon bad guy left in the movie universe, paving the way for both the dimensional villains of "Die Hard" and its ilk, AND the hosannas bestowed on "Unforgiven".

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12 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
Dirty Harry lite, 29 julio 2002

Author: Agent10 de Tucson, AZ

While this film was just pure entertainment, at least we got to see Dirty Harry doing what we all wanted to see him do: kick some serious ass. Sure, it seemed a little odd that a 60-year old man would be kicking the buts of guys of half his age, but isn't that what film is for: to escape reality? While this is somewhere in the middle in regards to the series as a whole, one cannot contend with the idea of Harry Callahan being one of the most endearing film characters ever made. A nice send-off to say the least.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Clint Eastwood is God: Part #5, 12 mayo 2006

Author: The_Hamster_Factor de United Kingdom

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

No matter how much I hate to admit that anything could go wrong with the Dirty Harry franchise, I am always taken back by how 'not great' 'The Dead Pool' is. I mean, 'The Dead Pool' is a good film, don't get me wrong, but it lacks a lot of what the other four films had and added a new revitalised look at an ageing cop taking a sexual interest in a news reporter, all the while as Guns n' Roses are present in attendance and a bunch of incredibly grisly deaths occur. The film isn't really an extensions of the great 'Sudden Impact' and a lot of the things missing from the previous four films are missing, and it also turns out that 'Dirty' Harry Callahan has become somewhat of a passive person now, as opposed to the violent, deeply right-wing, anti-hero he represented in the first four films. Yes, he still throws offensive words and he is occasionally violent, but otherwise, he's not as bad-ass as he once was, and he actually seems to care about something, as well as take care with his partner, who all so famously died in his past films. Eastwood's performance is a little more subdued than his past performances and I'm having a hard time asking myself whether or not this is intentional, given the lifeline of the character The film is about a 'Dead Pool', a sort of morbid sports pool where people place bets on which celebrity will die next. During the film, a serial killer who preys upon celebrities enters the picture, and changes the odds in his favour radically, and, perhaps, deliberately. As a quasi-celebrity, 'Dirty' Harry Callahan finds himself on the list, as does his new interest, news reporter Samantha Walker (played by Patricia Clarkson). Harry must find out who is killing the celebrities before he ends up being the last bet won.

My opinion - Eastwood should have directed this film as he did with 'Sudden Impact', maybe it would have turned out better. But one has to ask, is this the problem of the film-makers or the first and only time writer Steve Sharon? Personally, I think the film was good, it was very good in some places - namely 'the car chase' sequence involving a R/C car-bomb, the development of Liam Neeson's character and the murders themselves which development nicely with the plot. The one thing that is consistent with all the Dirty Harry films is that the plot is evenly paced, and 'The Dead Pool' is no exception. The plot is well-paced and the story never gets bogged down at some point, and it's always interesting. Yes, it isn't a film without faults, but it's probably, perhaps, the weakest of the five films from the Dirty Harry franchise.

6/10 - Clint Eastwood is, regardless of the lacking quality of this film, still God.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
The clever idea of a "Dead Pool" is worthy of a better film., 18 enero 2006

Author: S.C. Skafte de Nova Scotia, Canada

Dirty Harry was never original enough to support a long series. In matter of fact, it would have worked better as a TV series. "The Dead Pool" is mildly entertaining, but terribly unoriginal. Things go bang, car tires squeal, famous people get murdered, etc, etc.

Clint Eastwood is twice as stoic in the role than previous installments. Buddy Van Horn's direction is uninspired... in fact, the only things that stand out are Lalo Schifrin's score and Jim Carrey's performance.

Average at best, but will entertain Dirty Harry fans.

6.5 out of 10

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5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Clint still cool, 15 octubre 2005

Author: sushihai de China

Harry Callahan - or Dirty Harry as he is known from the previous four movies in this series - is investigating a strange betting game.Film director Peter Swan plays this game with his crew know as "The Dead Pool", wherein they each choose a set of 10 celebrities who they think will die before the game ends. The winner is the one with most number of dead celebrities. The problems start when the people on Swan's list start to die in mysterious circumstances. Harry is assigned to the case and discovers he is one of the names on Swan's list!And someone is following him and someone starts making attempts on Harry's life... Clint Eastwood is Harry Callahan,still very cool!The car chase scene is marvelous.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
All good things (Dirty) must come to an end, 6 marzo 2003
Author: george.schmidt (george.schmidt@hbo.com) de fairview, nj

THE DEAD POOL (1988) **1/2 Clint Eastwood, Patricia Clarkson, Evan C. Kim, Liam Neeson. Fifth and somewhat disappointing installment of the "Dirty Harry" series with Harry investigating a deadly game of murder involving celebrities and himself on the killer's list of victims. Variation on a chase sequence with a model/remote controlled race car rigged with explosives after Harry's car. And yes that is Jim Carrey lip-synching to Guns N' Roses "Welcome to the Jungle" as the murderer's first offing.

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