![]() ![]() ![]() Justice without mercy animated cynical Callahan’s intimidating catchphrase delivered over his gun barrel to quivering villain Scorpio:Ĭritic Pauline Kael called the film “fascist” and “immoral.” (Nixon, meanwhile, praised it and invited Eastwood to the White House.) This cop is an individual largely detached from familial, romantic or religious connections that could restrain or channel his primal violent urges. The knockabout actor and jazz musician from San Francisco, California came to embody that lone American on the edge of the frontier who hopped off his horse, touched his tarnished Sheriff’s badge, and faced down chaos with a dose of kickass.Ĭallahan and his Smith & Wesson 44 Magnum, the product of American industrial superiority, were a law unto themselves. The film touched a raw nerve and served as a model for vigilante movie cops for years to come. And by romanticizing that ultra-American antihero - the lone cop, the wronged husband, the downsized and foreclosed - they have contributed to a culture for the alt-right romanticizing the idea of a lone gunman taking down a corrupt system.Ĭlint Eastwood became an American icon as cowboy cop “Dirty” Harry Callahan in 1971. What my liberal friends did not grasp was that the cop is almost as evil, in his way, as the sniper.”Īlong with movies like Death Wish and Falling Down, the armed avenger, having been pushed to his limits by violence, grief or injustice, feels justified in strapping on a gun and letting loose, forget the collateral damage. When Director Don Siegel described his titular anti-hero in Dirty Harry, he was well aware of the danger he’d unleashed on the American imagination: “I was telling the story of a hard-nosed cop and a dangerous killer.
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