I can pretty much count on an Eastwood flick to make my day any time. So getting up this morning at 5:00 AM to catch this one is going to go for the long haul. However watching these Dirty Harry pictures it's easy enough to figure out that they weren't really written with credibility in mind. Take the hapless hit-men out for revenge over the untimely death of their boss Threlkis (Michael V. Gazzo). Why bother trying to run Callahan (Eastwood) down with their car when they had all that heavy artillery on hand? Why not just maneuver up close and whack him on the spot with no fanfare? Seems simple enough, but no, three of the goons chase him into an alley and get blown away for being stupid, while the fourth one makes a getaway. Not to worry, he get's his later on.
Or what about the three punks who throw the fireball into Harry's car? Harry manages to ride around town a few blocks with the vehicle a furnace, but a mere return lob of a similar fire bomb and the hoods drive off the pier and into the bay! Oh well, we're going back three decades now and films today that are written well generally don't offer these kinds of inconsistencies.
What you have here is a classic revenge flick in which Jennifer Spencer (Sondra Locke) and her sister were raped ten years earlier, leaving the younger sister catatonic and Jennifer out for blood. She's sort of a female Dirty Harry looking to cut through the B.S. of the court system and arrive at her own brand of justice. Pretty creatively too, those low shots are bound to hurt, at least momentarily.
Interesting that Pat Hingle was the sheriff in this picture, he appeared on the side of the law in at least a couple of other Eastwood pictures - 1968's "Hang 'Em High" and 1977's "The Gauntlet". His character here was somewhat distracting, fighting Harry at every turn instead of accepting his help. The twist with his apoplectic son Abby explained it later on, so I guess that angle made sense. Objectively speaking, Jennifer got away with murder after blowing away a handful of degenerates with Harry finding a way to make it stick. Like someone stated early in the story - "Callahan is the one constant in an ever changing universe."
Or what about the three punks who throw the fireball into Harry's car? Harry manages to ride around town a few blocks with the vehicle a furnace, but a mere return lob of a similar fire bomb and the hoods drive off the pier and into the bay! Oh well, we're going back three decades now and films today that are written well generally don't offer these kinds of inconsistencies.
What you have here is a classic revenge flick in which Jennifer Spencer (Sondra Locke) and her sister were raped ten years earlier, leaving the younger sister catatonic and Jennifer out for blood. She's sort of a female Dirty Harry looking to cut through the B.S. of the court system and arrive at her own brand of justice. Pretty creatively too, those low shots are bound to hurt, at least momentarily.
Interesting that Pat Hingle was the sheriff in this picture, he appeared on the side of the law in at least a couple of other Eastwood pictures - 1968's "Hang 'Em High" and 1977's "The Gauntlet". His character here was somewhat distracting, fighting Harry at every turn instead of accepting his help. The twist with his apoplectic son Abby explained it later on, so I guess that angle made sense. Objectively speaking, Jennifer got away with murder after blowing away a handful of degenerates with Harry finding a way to make it stick. Like someone stated early in the story - "Callahan is the one constant in an ever changing universe."