The 1970s were a good time for movies, but not a good time for franchises. These things just weren’t made, not with the reckless abandon of the ‘30s and ‘40s, or of the ‘80s and every time thereafter. Let us consider why. The Golden Age of Sequels (and also Hollywood, for what it’s worth) was defined by a divide between A- and B-pictures…Most of the sequels and franchises occurred within the B-realm, unconcerned with excess artistry or even box office beyond mere profitability and perpetuity. But when the studio system collapsed, aided by World War II and television, Bs ceased to be at the major studios – Hence the mini-majors, the semi-independents such as Roger Corman would come to represent took up the B-slack from the ‘50s onwards. But they were mostly unconcerned with sequels, typically following brief cinematic trends (biker movies, women in prison movies, etc.) rather than specific continuities. And within the major studios, big money was mostly spent on “important” dramas, A-material likely to give off the impression of pedigree – you know, literary adaptations, critic wanks and the such. And with the B-masters largely eschewing sequels, the big boy studios would themselves only pursue one if there was a particular viability to it.
Thus, even while Dirty Harry’s first sequel, Magnum Force, was both hugely successful financially, and an artistically noteworthy sequel (though falling short of the original’s iconography), it seems no third Dirty Harry picture was immediately envisioned. There was no necessary place to go with this narrative, as Dirty Harry had opened a controversial wound re: vigilantism, and Magnum Force had closed it, or at least presented the flipside argument. From the position of this franchise “meaning something,” it was done – even though cop movies are one of the most endlessly recyclable premises on Mother Earth.
A three year gap separates Magnum Force from its follow up. I cannot say with certainty what the studio plans were, but the fact is that the eventual project was given momentum by two outsider writers working on a spec script. Gail Morgan and S.W. Schurr developed Moving Target as a Dirty Harry picture, simply because they themselves were fans and wanted to see another one (and didn’t have the Internet to satiate their fetish). This script found its unerring way to Clint Eastwood’s favorite restaurant in Carmel (where he’d eventually become mayor), and it impressed Clint so much that he had two real Hollywood script doctors go to town on it – so that the final screenplay for The Enforcer (renamed in order to rip off Humphrey Bogart) belongs to Sterling Silliphant and Dean Reisner, those other two guys getting story credit. We’re a long way from John Milius and the other astounding writers who contributed to the first two, I tell you what.
And that’s the thing, given The Enforcer’s background: It is a generic Dirty Harry sequel, even though a generic Dirty Harry movie has more on its mind than your average actioner. Sadly, it does not have a cohesive thought, as rather its multitudinous screenwriters pursued different threads. The final film sees, almost wholly unincorporated, the villains on one side, Harry’s latest partner on the other, and a whole lack of momentum connecting them.
Continuing an almost imperceptible slide in franchise value, the director has been reduced to James Fargo, otherwise best known for Every Which Way But Loose, where he costarred Eastwood with an orangutan (and presumably, the orangutan’s trainer got paid more than Clint did). The result is a movie that lacks the gritty verisimilitude of Don Siegel and Ted Post (and also replaces Lalo Schifrin’s funky nonsense with an orchestra). It’s frustrating in this way, as the result is somewhat flat – never bad, never remotely inept, just remarkably uninspired and rote.
One question that must be answered when developing a context-free Dirty Harry sequel from scratch is “Who’s the bad guy?” Well, lucky for the series, it’s set in contemporary 1970s San Francisco crazy town – just wait a few years, and a loco new fruitcake villain emerges in real life so your movie can make the ersatz version. Because surely the Zodiac Killer was all about furthering Clint Eastwood’s career! And now that it’s 1976, here’s out latest band of murderous nutjob Bay Area assholes – The Symbionese Liberation Front! No, not the radical groups from Life of Brian, the new left commie militant hippie jerks who kidnapped and brainwashed Patty Hearst (back then, millionaire heiresses were interesting), robbed a few banks, and proved generally incompetent. When The Enforcer was put out, these maniacs had already been easily foiled by the FBI. It’s a potentially interesting villain idea, but it surely doesn’t hold a candle to the still-nebulous Zodiac Killer; unlike Dirty Harry, The Enforcer has to give its baddies a cinematic upgrade to make ‘em sufficient adversaries for our beloved Harry Callahan.
Things open with a Patty Hearst wannabe hitchhiker luring two gas men to an isolated cabin, where Bobby Maxwell (DeVeren Bookwalter), head of the People’s Revolutionary Strike Force (the PRSF™), gives ‘em respectively a healthy gutting and shotgun to the torso. Okay then, our villainous Mystery, Inc. group is established, making those two 7murders more for our sake than for any in-story reason. (The PRSF wanted a gas truck, and surely when you want something like that, you kill people!)
Going to a bright and over-lit (but still location shot) San Francisco, Inspector Harry Callahan (The Man With No Name) rides along with partner Frank DiGeorgio (John Mitchum, Robert’s brother and reoccurring series character up ‘til now – he abetted in the violation of Scorpio’s Fourth Amendment rights). As in the start of all Dirty Harry movies (or all Clint Eastwood movies at all, full stop), the first order of business is reestablishing Clint’s badass credentials, as if there were any question. But that’s what we’re here for! This must be done through a sudden, quick and plot-independent crisis, in this case a liquor store hostage scenario. Pretty much the exact same thing happened a third of the way through Magnum Force, except…that was a swap meet. Okay, then, it’s different!
We know how this goes: Harry goes in (crashing his sedan through the glass storefront), and shoots several young punks dead with his dear .44 Magnum. Showing Harry is capable of occasional mercy, he merely shoots one punk’s groin off from behind at the base of a staircase.
Such shenanigans are surely well outside of the realm of real world policing (repeat Nick Angel’s Hot Fuzz mantra about “incurring considerable amounts of paperwork”), and yet the inevitable chewing out from the police captain seems equally divorced from reality. Behold Captain McKay (Bradford Billman), undoubtedly amongst the most shortsighted and worthless police captains in the history of the genre. I’ve never seen a purer straw man to get us wholly on Harry’s side. Lt. Bressler (Harry Guardino) is also there, having sat out the whole of Magnum Force so that someone in his position could mastermind death squads – but that’s beside the point. Anyway, the gist is that for the next scene (and the next scene only), Harry shall be transferred from Homicide to Personnel. While The Enforcer may be light on the classic Milius one-liners and grit, Harry still gets attitude to spare, most of it aimed directly at McKay: “Personnel? That’s for assholes!”
Here in Personnel, Harry reviews potential applicants for a detective position. Here is where The Enforcer’s central “message” becomes obvious: it shall be tackling feminism. Oh boy!, 1970s feminism, that’s exactly what I want in my Clint Eastwood movies! It’s sadly never as well-developed as the prior vigilantism arguments (possibly because real world gender workplace equality wasn’t fully developed at this point anyway). Harry opposes the hiring of new officers such as Kate Moore (Tyne Daly, of mostly TV and Broadway, and subject of an inexplicable running joke on “The Cleveland Show”) based on general inability to do the job properly – Another grotesque PC straw (wo)man has an Affirmative Action quota to meet, however, and roundly rejects Harry’s criticisms. Who cares if a cop is competent, as long as she has a vagina, is basically the argument here. I have no idea what the movie’s actual stance is here, since it seems to take the feminist POV, then present it so illogically. Oh well, I like Harry.
What’s that? Oh right, the PRSF – our token baddies! This movie, easily the shortest Harry (until The Dead Pool), is reaching nearly a third over, and we’ve hardly set up our ostensible conflict. (Compare that to Scorpio’s efficiency in spurring the SFPD to action almost instantly.) So anyway, here come those various PRSF ruffians, quite resembling the “Venture Brothers” version of “Scooby Doo.” They have used their ill-got gas truck to gain access to a warehouse faclity through a single chain link fence guarded by a lone elderly gateman. (Naturally, Bobby murders the septuagenarian, in a trademark zero-honor backstabbing.) So…these militants have committed three homicides to accomplish the same thing I could do with a trampoline. And all this to gain access to a warehouse full of weapons – okay, putting L.A.W.S. rockets in your villains’ hands makes a little more sense. With those, they’ll be able to act out some sort of evil plan – if ever the movie’d opted to give them a plan.
And here comes DiGeorgio, along with a non-Harry (read: expendable) partner. DiGeorgio corners most of the rather incompetent militants (they ain’t the greatest villains Harry’s ever been up against), and earns a Bobby backstabbing special for his trouble. Upping the body count simply because it’s an action movie’s duty to do so, Bobby shoots the barely-wounded artificial Hearst (bye-bye, sex appeal!), then runs over DiGeorgio’s expendable partner with the gas truck.
DiGeorgio, out of all these people, cannot simply die right away, since he’s a recurring character, and needs a heartfelt deathbed scene with Harry. This is where our hero gets the scant info he needs to start a plotline – DiGeorgio describes Bobby as having, basically, an angel face and a boring name. (Only one of those is true.)
They know Bobby from an old case, prompting Harry to search the old files, prompting idiot McKay to yell at Harry for doing things slightly out of line with his out uniquely particular sense of bureaucracy. McKay is an asshole. Furthermore, he’s a closet racist, as he’s convinced this warehouse job was the work of black militants (read: Black Panther stand-ins, in case the Patty Hearst thing weren’t enough), despite the complete and utter lack of evidence pointing towards them. Since this becomes a major, plot-stalling thread, it’d be nice if there were some further justification for McKay’s sudden crusade against darkie.
Anyway, Harry’s been given a new partner, because three movies in that’s exactly the sort of Hollywood hack plot hook they’re going with now. (It sorta happened in Dirty Harry too, but that was to give us a window into Harry himself, and was never the source of comedy.) I’d give you one guess about Harry’s partner, except I’ve hardly said anything about her so far. Okay, so it’s Kate. Oh ho, Harry with a woman?! Saints preserve me, how mismatched! [Sarcasm.] If the series as a whole is the action genre in utero, here’s where those buddy cop comedies come from. This is how Kate will be used: hammering home the gender equality “message” with substantial lack of subtlety, serving as forehead-slappingly incompetent comic relief, and turning suddenly capable when the Third Act demands it. And this, folks, is why the villains have been shortchanged in this entry! So a Dirty Harry sequel can predict what a Lethal Weapon sequel would do!
Nothing’s progressing on that bad guy front so far, so here comes one of ‘em now to do something with next to zero purpose – blow up an unoccupied police restroom. You know, that doesn’t scare anyone. (Again, I could’ve done the same thing, with a cherry bomb – trampolines and cherry bombs…I could be a Dirty Harry villain!) All this does attract is Harry’s attention, leading to a much-delayed action sequence that can never get out of the lowest gear anyway. Harry chases the bathroom-bombing black man (just like the SLA, the PRSF has a token black guy, even though the real life organization was supposed to be about black people – idiots). So here we have a Dirty Harry foot chase across the rooftops (and genital-packed porno parlors) of San Francisco, played for laughs. Many of these laughs come from Kate, who cannot run in a skirt – Okay, which side is this movie on? And the soundtrack does nothing to aid what little adrenaline there is here, as it’s just big swing jazz noodling.
Ultimately Harry catches the punk, who has just sought out sanctuary in a church. This is a plot point, but the Harry of The Enforcer won’t realize that for another 40 minutes, quite unlike the Harry of Dirty Harry, who caught a serial killer based purely on MO. No matter, the punk perp is identified as a former black militant, which is damn well enough for McKay.
Harry is the first to act on this connection to “Uhuru” (the off brand Black Panthers), as he pays a visit to organization head “Big Ed” Mustapha (Eastwood’s buddy Albert Popwell, who’s role in former Harry flicks include a punk and a pimp – he’s come up in the world). This movie (like the series as a whole) briefly toys with racial issues, then instantly discards them. Then Mustapha, good stoolie that he is, tells Harry he has definite information on the villainous revolutionaries. He won’t tell this info to Harry right now, oh Lord no, ‘cause the movie has a half hour holding pattern in mind for the moment. So no matter, Harry strolls out of Mustapha’s barbershop, and mere moments later McKay and an overcompensating mass of SWAT officers descend upon Mustapha. Somehow with zero evidence, this police captain is able to arrest these heavily-influential black militants with no social repercussions at all!
All this was at the request of the Mayor, mind you. Now, it seems Dirty Harry’s nameless Mayor left town to becomes Dean of Faber College, meaning a totally new nameless Mayor (John Crawford) is in office to enact his mightily ineffective policies. A press conference is held in City Hall, announcing the arrest of Mustapha, Harry’s collar. Yes, here credit is given to Harry (and Kate), for an arrest he had nothing to do with and instantly opposes. McKay and the Mayor are class-A morons! Here is where Harry hands in his badge (‘cause it’s now known this simply happens in cop movies), though it affords Clint a great moment. First he subtly suggests McKay shove it up his ass (“That’s a seven-point suppository, Captain.”), then says things a little more directly when McKay’s limited intellect cannot parse such a one-liner (“I said stick it up your ass!”). It’s a testament to Clint’s star power just how well this moment works, despite how forced they’ve made the captain’s moronical stupidosity.
Harry has a heart-to-heart with Kate, you know, for the “character development.” To this movie’s infinite credit, it has the good sense to avoid a romantic pairing, though it was considered. Nope, they know it’d be forced and unnecessary, and at Clint’s insistence it’d be unrealistic too, considering police professionalism. And oh boy, Kate’s talk about sexual equality just smacks of specific ‘70s rhetoric, ‘cause there’s no better way to espouse ideals than in instantly-outdated speechifying.
But what of those PRSF prats? Who?! Right, the villains. Well now, well under a half hour left, they just go right ahead and kidnap that ineffective Mayor (who’s earned our hatred by ducking out of a Giants game early). This is a chance for the movie to wave about five more deaths before us, including an entirely undeserving bridge operator (these sorts of casualties always bug me in action movies, even while I can watch a cannibal movie without flinching). More importantly, as mere spectacle, it’s a chance for the movie to show us an explosion, in the first (much delayed) usage of a L.A.W.S. rocket. Ka-bangus!
Somehow, this development provokes McKay to go and chew out Harry again, which is merely a ceremonial way of indicating it’s now the Third Act. And Harry’s now a civilian (with a .44 Magnum), so McKay’s directionless rage is stupider than usual. But Harry gets another nice bon mot off on McKay: “Mouthwash ain’t makin’ it.”
In Harry’s mind, the plot cannot progress without Mustapha’s info (‘cause he’s forgotten all about that church), so Harry goes ahead and posts however much Mustapha’s bail is. Then, right away, Mustapha gives him the info he should’ve gotten long ago: there’s a girl called Wanda (presumably a fish too)! Ooh, careful with those bombshells, Enforcer, we don’t wanna excite the audience unduly or anything!
It’s enough, though, for Harry to go on a random sequence of adventures across the city, whatever left-field set pieces they could think of. The first one sees Harry crashing a “massage” parlor, where Wanda used to work as an “escort.” Come for the moment where Clint Eastwood destroys an inflatable sex doll with a cigarette! Then marvel as he pounds the hell out of a mustachioed bouncer with a plunger, extracting the latest information on Wanda’s whereabouts.
That church! Oh man, this could’ve been a 45 minute movie had Harry worked this one out on his own. But no matter, I cannot pay attention to odd plot structuring when Harry Callahan is busy beating information out of a priest in a confessional booth, as the elderly flee for safety. Eastwood movies work best at their brashest, and this is the moment that made Eastwood think The Enforcer would be a decent movie – church beatings! And along comes a shotgun-toting nun (which would make for a great grindhouse flick), sneaking up on Harry as he schools the priest on proper flagellation.
Ker-shoot! Earning her Third Act competence, Kate blows the gun nun away, nunsploitating the pulpit with her brain matter! Whoo, the movie’s gone crazy! And now Wanda’s dead – er, the nun was Wanda. The priest is finally clued in to the violent nature of the bazooka-toting ex-Vietnam hippies he’s been harboring. Therefore he has the information that shall lead Harry to the final violent set piece.
One jump cut later, Harry and Kate take a boat out to Alcatraz Island. This seems a rather impromptu invasion force they’ve assembled, which is perhaps why the logic leading up to this is hidden through the magic of editing. And let’s see here: A hostage held in the prison cells of Alcatraz, San Francisco held hostage with rocket launchers…I’ve seen this movie before! (Yes, no action movie is free of Harry’s influence.)
The first of four remaining PRSF puissants fires at Harry from the guard tower. In response, Harry uses the boat’s water cannon, knocking the Hell Hippie into the bay (as in Magnum Force, we’re asked to believe falling into water is instantly fatal to bad guys). Then he and Kate race around the island for a quick and dirty shootout against Bobby’s forces, in a scene that shouldn’t worry Michael Bay one slight bit.
In the end it must all come down to a showdown between Harry and Bobby, the Mayor proving as useless a hostage as he is a politician. But seeing as this is the 1970s, even the most disposable of entertainments feels the need to spice things up at the end with a little unwarranted tragedy. You know how some formula movies just end happily because it’s the standard; this is the ‘70s flipside. Kate is shot dead, not for any particular dramatic reason or anything, but because it’s “gritty.” (It also “snaps back” continuity in case of another sequel, since Harry just cannot have a partner.) But these academic issues become completely meaningless the instant Clint Eastwood picks up a rocket launcher!
Just to harp on the combined tragedy and idiocy, the final aerial shot moves away from a sullen Harry as McKay’s helicopter converges on the island, issuing a spineless capitulation to Bobby’s demands. However McKay, with his learning disability, found out Bobby was on Alcatraz, I cannot say. And fear not, people who think Clint Eastwood and Alcatraz should be a greater peanut butter and chocolate combo than it was here…Don Siegel would really deliver the goods in three years with Escape from Alcatraz.
The Enforcer is that rare second sequel which did even better box office business than its precedents. This franchise is, monetarily, ever expanding. This is despite the drop in quality, perhaps because The Enforcer is (by ‘70s standards) a happy movie. That year’s Rocky won the Oscar for being “’70s happy” (the hero loses at the end), and 1977’s Star Wars showed just how popular a completely uncynical movie could be. And of course there was Jaws the year before, proving how a B-style exploitation movie could be the new A. It’s no coincidence that all these happier movies would engender franchises, while the excellent but ultra-depressing Chinatown could only fart out one sequel (The Two Jakes) over a decade later. Clearly, something was in the air that would put an end to the non-franchising ways of post-War Hollywood.
Despite this sentiment, it was Clint Eastwood who was damn satisfied in 1976 to leave his Dirty Harry franchise as a trilogy. That must be quite the temptation, for things always seem nice and neat at trilogy level. It’s like the comic rule of three: You’ve shown your idea, variation and counter-variation. Anything else would be mere repetition. And by the third film (obvious here in The Enforcer’s case), the seams almost always start to show. But while the Dirty Harry series is always a guidepost for the action genre, so would its eventual fourth film show off another eventual trend still in its infancy…
The fourth film reboot!
Related posts:
• No. 1 Dirty Harry (1971)
• No. 2 Magnum Force (1973)
• No. 4 Sudden Impact (1983)
• No. 5 The Dead Pool (1988)
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