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Benjamin Wood
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Score: 2.5/5

It's always tough for me to rate "classic" movies. On the one hand, it's easy to give the movies great reviews, showering compliments about the "innovation" of the movie and how, for its time, it was like the best in the business. At the same time, many "classic" movies have not aged well, and today look extremely dated and are, to put it frankly, amazingly boring by today's standards.

I was not enamored with Dirty Harry. Clint Eastwood's performance as the title character was good but not spectacular, the supporting actors were for the most part non-factors (except for the crazy serial killer, who was distracting with just how much he hammed up his performance), the story was drawn out way beyond its logical limit, and the film itself was not all that exciting or tense. In fact, the only moment I found myself truly drawn in was a scene where Eastwood has to run a bag of money around town, jumping from pay phone to pay phone as a kidnapper gives him directions that are increasingly more difficult to follow.

There's no denying that Dirty Harry was wildly influential, as you can see many of its elements seeping into later action films: gratuitous nudity that serves no real purpose, main characters who are badass yet seem to lack in actual development, the crazy killer who is the antithesis to the "wholesome" values of the protagonist, and a line repeated in a movie by the protagonist in the hopes that it is vividly remembered long after the movie has ended (in Dirty Harry's case, it's "Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"). Unfortunately, all of these elements have been repeated so many times that they have become horrible action movie cliches, and it's difficult to watch Dirty Harry in retrospect without thinking, "Man, I've seen all of this before somewhere."

One aspect, however, that continues to bug me is the constant stereotyping of minorities and gay men in the film. Black men and women are depicted as stereotypes, as criminals and those who only speak in heavy "urban slang," while gay men seem to be displayed as limp wristed and hyper-effeminate. I understand that the early seventies was still a time of bigotry and that the entertainment business is still a cesspool of horrible stereotypes (although they are much more insidious and subtle nowadays), yet I can't help but be irked by these portrayals. Am I supposed to forgive a film for these caricatures because the film was from a different era and the makers might "not have known any better?" Am I supposed to think it's funny that Dirty Harry hates everyone, "especially Spics?" Am I supposed to forgive Harry for his sexism and racism because he's trying to stop a child murderer? It creates a paradox that leaves you feeling dirty no matter which side you take: You can either root for a sexist, bigoted asshole, or you can root for someone who murders children. The film's simplistic dichotomy leaves no middle ground, and paints Dirty Harry in such a positive light that it's clear that you must be "for" or "against" certain characters.

Unfortunately, that aspect of the film has also carried into today's cinema, with heroes who have unforgiveable flaws, and yet we're forced to root for them because the antagonist has flaws which are even more unsavory. In the end, judging Dirty Harry for its influence on the action genre is easy to do. Asking whether this influence was a positive thing or a negative thing, however, is a very different question, and one that is rarely asked, and less often answered. My personal feeling is that Dirty Harry does more harm than good, but there are plenty who would disagree with me, who would say I'm reading too much into things. I'm not telling anyone to agree with my assessment of the movie, but rather I'm urging those watching to at least give thought to the topic. I can easily see people that cannot forgive Harry for his views, yet will still view this as a quintessential action movie. And maybe if I had found the action sequences to be more exciting and suspenseful I would be one of those people. Unfortunately, the film itself falls short, making it much tougher to forgive Harry for his views.

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