Kthaahthikha

I finally saw Dirty Harry because it is one of those landmark films.

In perfect honesty I found it manipulative, short-sighted, narrow-minded, frequently implausible, guilty of using straw-man arguements and quite happy to take an incredibly complicated issue and try to dumb it down until it eventually becomes practically one-sided.

The most obvious example being the end sequence. If Scorpio was going to get on a plane, couldn't they have just put a couple of security guys on the plane disguised as crew members and had them get the drop on him? Then there's the bit where they agree to give Scorpio the money the first time - I'm pretty sure the cops would have developed some form of trap instead of just folding.

I'm also not entirely sure that Scorpio would have been able to walk so easily in the real world after his first arrest. Even if they didn't have evidence against him for the girl, he assaulted a police officer with intent to commit murder and shot another cop with a sub-machine gun which conveniently vanished from the scene of the crime. And this after being witnessed gunning-down a uniformed cop.

And all those times when Scorpio deliberately targets the most sensitive targets - kids, women and stuff! Shameless.

Then there's the fact that Scorpio quite clearly has a mental problem.

And how the hell did Callahan know where to be in the final sequence, ready to drop down atop the bus.

It was like watching The Thing From Another World all over again.

In short, I declare this particular segment of our shared cultural heritage non-canon.



...


Still, the photography and Clint Eastwood were good. It's a well-made film with some good performances and a memorable, if 2-dimensional, vilain.

'If it's fun it doesn't have to make sense.'

- Dying words of various Hollywood script doctors. Apocryphal.

But it painted such a one-sided picture of the SFPD higher-ups!

This post of yours truly reflects your self-description. And may i add, you are very insightful.