For good or for ill, Clint Eastwood's five Dirty Harry films, which have been released in a new seven-disc DVD boxed set by Warner Home Video ($74.98), have done more to define today's cop movie than virtually any other film. From where else could the requirement come that every new action flick coin a catchphrase than from the films that gave us half a dozen memorable one-liners, most notably Inspector Harry Callahan's self-satisfied, I'm-this-close-to-dispatching-your-soul-to-hell proclamation, "Go ahead, make my day." From Arnold Schwarzenegger's "I'll be back" in the first two "Terminator" films to Bruce Willis' "Yippee-kai-yay" in "Die Hard," the catchphrase usually validates the hero's moral - and mortal - superiority and helps fuse our enthusiastic identification with him. Trouble is, more often than not, the one-liner is uttered just as the hero is about to unleash a big can of vengeful, homicidal whoop on the bad guy. This is the most significant - and controversial - thematic element Dirty Harry has bequeathed the contemporary cop drama: Harry is as much vigilante as he is Joe Friday. He doesn't bother with such niceties as Miranda rights. Thus the violent reactions the original 1971 film inspired in many critics, including Pauline Kael, who called it "fascist." ...
Anytime
