Inspector Harry Callahan was born in Dirty Harry, 1971, and was shot dead in The Dead Pool, 1988. By "shot dead", I don't mean gunned down. I mean that when they shot this film he was dead or like dead in every scene.
Inspector Callahan had already probably died of old age in Sudden Impact, back in 1983. Producers should have realized this fact. After all, it was scripted in the movie, when Capt. Briggs, one of Callahan's superiors, shouts: "You're a dinosaur, Callahan!" And Clint Eastwood should have understood that the success of the character he had given life to, 12 years prior, was based not only on the stubborn cynical attitude displayed by Harry Callahan but also on a degree of vitality that his middle-aged Callahan could no longer expend (Eastwood was 53 in Sudden Impact and 58 in The Dead Pool). Don't get me wrong! I think Mr. Eastwood has played some of his most memorable roles beyond that age. In Unforgiven he was 62, in The Bridges of Madison County he was 65, not to mention the extraordinary directing he has done since. But no-one had ever asked to watch the physical decline of Harry Callahan.
Steve Sharon's dialogue in The Dead Pool is a sad and sorry affair, a career first and last, made worse only by Buddy Van Horn's directing. Mr. Van Horn is a stunt-coordinator. Judging by his résumé, he's probably a very good one and has, likely, staged numbers far more perilous than this without (one would hope) anything going wrong. In The Dead Pool, however, his judgment is so far off that the consequences are disastrous. Not that any of the actors does much to help Mr. Van Horn. Clint Eastwood slurs his lines and not even Harry's one gem in the whole 91 minutes, (WARNING: IN A FILM THIS AWFUL, TO GIVE THIS AWAY MIGHT BE CLASSED AS A SPOILER!!) the one about opinions and asses and everybody having one, (END OF GEM!!) gets the delivery it deserves. Liam Neeson plays the film director, and it's a wonder he was ever asked to act again. A wonder, because he's so frail and erratic throughout the movie, that he can't even hold the same accenT: halfway London Cockney, halfway Irish. Lucky for us and for Schindler's List that this performance was forgiven and (surely) forgotten. Then, there's Jim Carrey, who plays a cheap film star, and, though he's credited as James Carrey it really makes no difference. They can't fool us: we know it's good old reliable Ventura/Mask/Cable Guy-Carrey.
Dirty Harry, Magnum Force and The Enforcer might have bequeathed history an acceptable and fun trilogy of flicks, with that seventies flavor, music and pace to them, with that slow and brusque yet lethal Inspector Callahan and his Charles Bronson mentality. Yet, if Sudden Impact was, potentially, a mistake, then The Dead Pool was, undeniably, a fatal error.
Inspector Callahan had already probably died of old age in Sudden Impact, back in 1983. Producers should have realized this fact. After all, it was scripted in the movie, when Capt. Briggs, one of Callahan's superiors, shouts: "You're a dinosaur, Callahan!" And Clint Eastwood should have understood that the success of the character he had given life to, 12 years prior, was based not only on the stubborn cynical attitude displayed by Harry Callahan but also on a degree of vitality that his middle-aged Callahan could no longer expend (Eastwood was 53 in Sudden Impact and 58 in The Dead Pool). Don't get me wrong! I think Mr. Eastwood has played some of his most memorable roles beyond that age. In Unforgiven he was 62, in The Bridges of Madison County he was 65, not to mention the extraordinary directing he has done since. But no-one had ever asked to watch the physical decline of Harry Callahan.
Steve Sharon's dialogue in The Dead Pool is a sad and sorry affair, a career first and last, made worse only by Buddy Van Horn's directing. Mr. Van Horn is a stunt-coordinator. Judging by his résumé, he's probably a very good one and has, likely, staged numbers far more perilous than this without (one would hope) anything going wrong. In The Dead Pool, however, his judgment is so far off that the consequences are disastrous. Not that any of the actors does much to help Mr. Van Horn. Clint Eastwood slurs his lines and not even Harry's one gem in the whole 91 minutes, (WARNING: IN A FILM THIS AWFUL, TO GIVE THIS AWAY MIGHT BE CLASSED AS A SPOILER!!) the one about opinions and asses and everybody having one, (END OF GEM!!) gets the delivery it deserves. Liam Neeson plays the film director, and it's a wonder he was ever asked to act again. A wonder, because he's so frail and erratic throughout the movie, that he can't even hold the same accenT: halfway London Cockney, halfway Irish. Lucky for us and for Schindler's List that this performance was forgiven and (surely) forgotten. Then, there's Jim Carrey, who plays a cheap film star, and, though he's credited as James Carrey it really makes no difference. They can't fool us: we know it's good old reliable Ventura/Mask/Cable Guy-Carrey.
Dirty Harry, Magnum Force and The Enforcer might have bequeathed history an acceptable and fun trilogy of flicks, with that seventies flavor, music and pace to them, with that slow and brusque yet lethal Inspector Callahan and his Charles Bronson mentality. Yet, if Sudden Impact was, potentially, a mistake, then The Dead Pool was, undeniably, a fatal error.