The Enforcer

Captain McKay: “Callahan, you've been transferred to Personnel."
Harry Callahan: “Personnel? That's for assholes."
Captain McKay: “I worked in Personnel for TEN YEARS!"
Harry Callahan: “Yeah."

release year: 1976
genre: police action
viewing setting: home DVD, 4/12/19 and 4/9/11 and 2/12/04

synopsis: Dirty Harry gets a new, female partner just in time to take on a gang of young terrorists.

impressions: The show goes on. Yet again, bureaucracy and ego/career come before catching the bad guys. Harry's superiors are all idiots and he's the only one who is willing and able to do what must be done. This very much reminds me of the career of a certain Mr. Marcinko of the Navy. I was genuinely mad at the end of this movie - the mayor might as well have signed a certain death warrant, due to his own shortsightedness. The female partner (and her reasons for being assigned to Harry) was a weird mix of an odd character and politically-correctness. Also, the bad guys are just a bunch of violent young people and ex-cons - they kill 8 innocent people, most of them just for the hell of it. It's easy to root for Harry as he systematically hunts these lowlifes down and blows them away. There's plenty of gunplay here, including a LAW (the "revolutionary" terrorists robbed an armory.)

acting: Clint Eastwood reprises his role perfectly. Tyne Daly is quirky as the new female partner. As usual, the mayor and the police chief characters were idiots. Michael Cavanaugh (the main bad guy from Forced Vengeance) and Dick Durock (who played Swamp Thing among others) are both members of the gang of bad guys.

final word: Good third installment, and it more or less predicts - more than 20 years ahead of time - much of the legal idiocy we face today.

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