Dirty Harry on Bluray

[wbassett]

"Well I'm all broken up about that man's rights."

Actors: Clint Eastwood
Format: Color, Widescreen
Language: English
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)

Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Number of discs: 1
Rating:
Studio: Warner
DVD Release Date: June 3, 2008
Run Time: 102 minutes

"Detective Harry Callahan. You don't assign him to murder cases. You just turn him loose."

YouTube - Eastwood's Greatest Hits - Dirty Harry

When it comes to Dirty Harry, where do you really start? With the movie, the actor, or how this one movie changed action movies forever?

I'll start with the Bluray DVD package.

There are two packages, a single movie package, and then a complete Dirty Harry collection. I got the single movie because, well quite frankly as much as I find the sequels entertaining, none of them can live up to the first movie, and that is the one that deserves the royal treatment, and it gets it.

Whether you buy the boxed set or just the first movie, get ready for a nice package of visuals and special features.

The single movie comes in a Bluray 'case' like you've never before seen. It is actually a book that happens to also have a BD movie included. The boxed set has even more, including a badge! (But I have the gun on display with my movie memorabilia )

It isn't a novel or anything like that, but it harkens back to the days of Laser Disc and the Criterion Collections where they included movie stills, and some even came with full size coffee table books. Granted nobody wants a DVD package the size of a road atlas, so this is a nice compromise.

The disc itself contains numerous special features and interviews. Honestly though, aside from the interviews and the inclusion of "Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows" narrated by Morgan Freeman, most if not all of the special features are also on my standard DVD set I also own.

Not all the special features are created or even treated equal though. Some look pretty rough and I will say I don't think any effort whatsoever was put into cleaning up the video on some of them. By far the worse was the special feature 'The Dirty Harry Way'. The only way I can describe it is it reminded me of a VHS tape that sat on the self a couple years too long. It is almost unwatchable it is that bad.

The other features are better, but none of them are in High Def. Still though they are fun to watch and Robert Urich does a good job taking us through some memories of not only the first movie, but many memorable scenes throughout the franchise.

John Millus makes his presence known as always. I like the man, but he definitely has an over inflated sense of self worth, just like he displayed in the Conan special features. There is an interesting note on Millus, but you'll have to keep reading, I'll get to that in a bit. He still has some interesting things to say though. Arnold chimes in too, commenting on some memorable scenes (which he manages to get wrong! Harry eats hotdogs, not hamburgers!) Why would Arnold be on a Dirty Harry special feature though? Besides the two of them being friends, Dirty Harry redefined the action genre and staged the way for people like him... but more on that in a bit too.

The interviews are also very interesting to watch. Overall when you take the companion book into consideration, it's a nice special features package. It's not too bloated like T2 and the new Star Wars movies, it's 'just right'. What they could have and should have done better though is clean up the video to match the tribute that this is supposed to be.

What could have been...

To take a line from Rod Serling- Picture if you will...

Take a minute and try to imagine how this movie would have looked and felt if the studio got their first pick actor.

Sinatra was so much the favorite that this demo poster was made. Sinatra hurt his wrist and couldn't do the movie. Clint though wasn't even the second choice, that went to Paul Newman. Newman read the script and immediately rejected it saying it was too violent and 'political'. It was then offered to Clint and he was told about Newman's comments about it being too political for him and Clint's response was "Really? Let me see it." The rest as they say is history.

Along with Clint came his long time friend and Director Don Siegal. The two had worked together many times before and Siegal knew his leading man and exactly how to shoot this film. What they created was a dirty and gritty police film that had action, drama, chases, and some controversial views on the establishment.

The title is "Dirty Harry" and it's implied that he's a dirty cop, but he is far from what we think of as a dirty cop. Try to give Harry a bribe and see what happens... but have the misfortune of being the bad guy that the courts let go on a 'technicality', even though they know they have the killer everyone is looking for, and well that's when Harry gets down and dirty. He stops at nothing to catch the bad guy and administer justice as it sometimes deserves to be dished out... with the same harsh and cruel outcome that the killer gave his victims. Is Harry moral, absolutely, but does he bend and even break the rules to 'Serve and Protect'... most definitely.

One of the things that sets Dirty Harry apart from the rest of the films, and many other action movies for that matter, is the bad guy. Andrew Robinson is the actor that plays Scorpio, a killer loosely based on the real life Zodiac killer of that time. Robinson was picked specifically because he looked sweet and innocent, 'like a choir boy' as Siegal and Eastwood put it. Robinson isn't a physical presence like most action movie villains are- he is though a very real and scary look at a real killer... someone twisted and insane. Whatever happened to Scorpio in Nam definitely changed his life forever, or perhaps maybe the experience unlocked a lust and desire to kill that Scorpio couldn't keep locked up anymore. We will never know though because Harry's form of justice was final and left no room for Oprah or Barbara Walter's interviews to see what horrible thing happened to this 'sweet man' and how he really is the victim. Harry doesn't see it that way and neither do I, nor do any of Scorpio's victims or his victims relatives... Clint is the star, but when you watch this again, give Robinson his dues. He is creepy, insane, and all around evil... and this was his first big screen movie! He was so good that he not only was type cast, he actually received death threats from people.

Always remember this, in order to have a good hero, you must have a good and believable bad guy, and Andrew more than delivered when it came to that. Give him his respect and credit he deserves... I mean I wanted to shoot Scorpio myself! This is a very nice man in real life that pulled off playing pure insane and evil... bravo Andrew. You were the only real true bad guy Clint ever faced!

My wife actually watched this with me and right away she commented that this wasn't just a typical action flick where outrageous stunts, explosions, and high powered weapons meant more than the plot. When the scene came up where Harry tracks down Scorpio in the football stadium and shoots him in the leg (with a very realistic portrayal of what a magnum can do) literally flipping Scorpio over, what happened next made my wife cringe (you can now see the compound fracture from the magnum shot and bone sticking out of Scorpio's leg before Harry steps on it to find out where the buried girl is. On SDVD I never noticed the bone, just the blood) and at first she said "He's a cop, he can't do that. That's not right..." I asked her to to think back to when our own daughter was 13 and if someone had kidnapped her, who would she want on the case? She immediately changed her mind and said 'Harry'.

So Dirty Harry really isn't a 'dirty cop', but he doesn't exactly play by the rules either.

So what made Harry so cynical and 'dirty'? It's the stuff of legends, as well as fodder for future movie ripoffs. Harry's wife and daughter are killed in a car accident, when a drunk driver crossed the center line. Harry is a tough guy and the only way he knows how to grieve is to bury himself in his work and 'take the bad guys off the streets'. Sixteen years later another movie franchise would start, and the lead character and hero also was a cop whose wife and daughter are killed in a car accident by a drunk driver. Unlike Dirty Harry though, Lethal Weapon was a full blown 1980's action flick. Don't get me wrong, I love the movie, but if it wasn't for Clint and Dirty Harry, action flicks may not have become the world wide entertainment and box office block busters that we know them to be.

Die Hard also pays a lot of tribute and has to thank Clint and Dirty Harry for the genre. Mclane is also a lone rogue cop that doesn't exactly always see eye to eye with his boss or the establishment.

The idea of an 'anti-hero', was completely unheard of before Eastwood showed the world 'The Man with no Name' and then Harry's form of justice. Hero's before that wore white and never broke the law, ever.

Now, a little about the movie transfer. For a 4K video transfer and the fact Warner really spared no expense on this boxed set or the first movie, I expected a lot. I will say that overall it is far better than my SDVD version, but it wasn't what I expected either.

Closeup shots look incredible, but dark scenes have a lot of jitter and artifacting in them. Considering most of this movie is filmed at night and in dark scenes, that means there are a lot of less than stellar scenes. This is Bluray and 4K... what happened? The only thing I can come up with is this is a 37 year old movie and maybe this was the best they could do with film stock that old. I want to believe that, but after seeing the 4K transfers of the James Bond flicks Dr. No and Thunderball... well I just can't help but think they could have done better.

Like I said though, it is still much better than the SDVD, but I also still would not call this 'high definition'. One scene would be incredibly clear and crisp, only to be followed up by a scene that still showed many transfer flaws.

All things said though, take the picture to the left. Granted that's not an actual screen shot, but look at the pattern of Harry's suit. On regular DVD the herringbone pattern would have been nothing but a blur and fuzzed up mess. Here it is just as crisp as the promo still shown.

So overall I say it is better than DVD, but it isn't a magical transfer and not 'quite' HD, but still good.

Sound... The studio like Harry, kept things minimal but when a point needed to be made, it sure was. In the history of movies there is nothing that sounds like a .44 magnum. (This gun is so popular and sounds so distinctive that Hollywood often dubs a .44 Magnum for any pistol, even the rather wimpy real life pop of a Beretta 9mm is often made to sound like Harry's famous gun) It is so distinctive of a sound that anyone would recognize it immediately. The Bluray transfer and sound definitely keeps the myth and magic alive.

Early in the movie Harry goes on a rooftop stakeout and brings a a .458 magnum elephant gun with him, and when the shots start flying between him and Scorpio's submachine gun, the bass really kicks in and you can 'feel' the bullets ripping through the air. It's a sonic experience just like any time Harry fires his now famous magnum.

Speaking of the ever famous .44 magnum Harry uses, it's interesting to note that he uses several versions throughout the movie. In most scenes he uses a Smith & Wesson Model 29 with a six inch barrel, but in scenes where they wanted the gun to look even more menacing they used an eight inch barrel version. Most people never pick up on the gun change, they only know they never want to be looking down the business end of ether version!


Movie quotes- As I mentioned earlier, Clint Eastwood redefined the hero role and Dirty Harry transformed action films forever. One thing that people don't know is that the now common 'one liner' started with none other than Connery in his version of Bond, but Eastwood has the honors of some of the most famous movie lines, and Dirty Harry has one of them, along with Sudden Impact as being in the top 100 most famous movie lines ever. But... what if the line had been delivered as it was written?

I mentioned John Millus earlier. His contribution to the Dirty Harry franchise is that he was one of the screenplay writers of Magnum Force, but... he also wrote the lines that became one of the most famous ever said in a movie... the 'Do you feel lucky punk?' line... but how would it have been remembered if Clint said it exactly as it was written?

Callagahan
Well? Was it five or was it six? Regulations say five...hammer down on an empty...only not all of us go by the book. What you have to do is think about it. I mean, this is a .44 Magnum and it'll turn your head into hash. Now, do you think I fired five or six? And if five, do I keep a live one under the hammer? It's all up to you. Are you feeling lucky, punk?

Siegal knew Eastwood was a minimalist, and the 'speech' was one of the longest Clint ever delivered in a movie then or now, but Siegal and Clint knew it just didn't sound 'right'. The rewrite is still quoted to this day. Words don't do justice, it's something you have to see and hear it...
YouTube - Dirty Harry

This line is more than movie magic though, it really has relevance to the not only the movie but Harry's character. In the beginning of the movie when Harry delivers the line, he knows hes out and he's playing with the bad guy.

By the end of the movie and after the court system blindly letting Scorpio go, Harry isn't playing around any more and his tone reflects that. He also 'knows' he's not out of shots and at this point is taunting Scorpio to take the dare. This is what they call a circular story line, when something at the beginning becomes a factor at the end.

Harry isn't a bad guy, but he knows if he takes Scorpio in alive, the court system definitely would find him guilty this time, but their form of justice would allow Scorpio to appeal and appeal and appeal, staying alive and even the potential for parole. So Harry knows he didn't fire six, only five, just like in the beginning he knew he fired all six rounds. This time, teeth clinched, Harry delivers justice as most of us secretly want to see happen.

The movie also delves into the wild west image that Eastwood was becoming famous for. As the movie progresses, his suit becomes less modern and starts taking on the look of the lone sheriff facing the gunman at high noon. The .44 magnum revolver is similar to the look of his western revolvers, and he is now dressed in a plain brown suit that doesn't look much different than what a 1900's sheriff would have worn. In this sense Dirty Harry was the real bridging of Clint's westerns to modern times and handled it much better than Coogan's Bluff did. It also made Eastwood an international star and forever changed action movies.

For those that are Eastwood fans, this is a must have.

For those looking for a high def BD movie that will knock your socks off, it is okay but you'll probably be disappointed in that respect. If you want a good story and acting, this is better than the SDVD version when you include the 'book' and special features. I had Out of The Shadows on a seperate disc and it is nice having that included.

If you are an Eastwood fan... SamClub has the complete set for $88, which comes out to less than $18 a movie (and that's BD not SDVD) and you can get it even cheaper online. Check the Shack Store for prices and deals and I think you'll find this is a nice High Def set to have and the price isn't that bad when you consider it's five movies and a ton of special features.

Features and overall quality, it is worth the $23 I paid for it that's for sure.

[nova]

Hey Bill,.... excellent review
Thanks for your thoughts and insights.

[wbassett]

Thanks Nova. I grew up in the '70s and Clint was and is one of my Hollywood heros.

I almost snagged the boxed set with all the movies, but like I said the sequels just aren't the same as this movie.

In the first movie I can picture Harry as a real person, albeit one that is borderline being thrown off the force. If it wasn't for the fact that he was so good at bringing in the bad guys I'm sure he would have been crucified for police brutality and breaking not only the 'rules' but the law. The thing about Harry though is he never crosses the line into becoming a vigilante, which is the story line of Magnum Force. Because of that, his superiors tended to look the other way. Just like the scene before Harry is taking the money to Scorpio and he's in Bressler's office and asks for some tape so he can hide a switch blade on his leg. Bressler says "Tsk tsk"... waves his finger, and says "It's a shame a cop should know how to use a weapon like that." Thing is, he wasn't condemning Harry as much as he was coyly saying 'Do what you need to do'. Like I said, Harry wasn't immoral or a cop on the take, he just got all the tough and dirty jobs is all... because he was the man that got the job done.

In the sequels things started to fall into the Hollywood trap where everything had to top the last movie. It really is a shame because this franchise could have remained an action drama series instead of turning into an action parody of itself. The second movie was plausible enough for me, but it just lacked something. I can't put my finger on it, but something was off. Maybe it was the ease Harry takes out the vigilante cops, I really don't know... maybe it was the ending... a bit of a let down and blowing up your boss? I'd rather have seen Harry do to Hal Holbrock's Lt. Briggs what Briggs said he was going to do to Harry... let the system that Harry sometimes despises be the thing that takes him down. I understand it wouldn't have been as climactic, but it would have been much more realistic.

By the time The Enforcer comes around, Harry is now a full blown Hollywood caricature of himself from the first movie. The Magnum wasn't even enough of a show down weapon, Harry had to use a bazooka! (LAWS rocket actually)

Sudden Impact- Sondra Locke... need I say more? It did give us the classic line "Go ahead... Make my day!" But what happened to the .44 magnum being the most powerful handgun in the world? The scrawny thug he shot in the arm looked and acted like he was hit with a .22 not a .44!

The Dead Pool gives us wild RC exploding car chases, and again the famous .44 is abandoned in favor of a whale harpoon gun!

They really could have kept the series grounded and real and I think people still would have flocked to them, in fact they may have even fared better if they were true police drama's instead of action parody shticks.

That's why I like Dirty Harry. I can see this really happening. Nothing was too over the top, no wire stunts, no outrageous exposions... it was more of a drama than action, yet it had action... That's really what sets this movie apart from the rest in my opinion.

I am surprised that the transfer wasn't better than it was. Clint is Warner's magic man, they even re-released Dirty Harry on the big screen for a limited run for the nostalgia. Check out the Warner Website for Dirty Harry. I wish I could have put that video in my review!

Clint is such a power house with Warner that I bet if he would have say "Unh Unh... No Bluray, I like HD DVD, go Bluray and I walk." I really bet Warner might have actually stepped back and thought about their decision... he really is that big and brings a lot to the Warner table (and bank accounts too). So why Dirty Harry doesn't look absolutely pristine is beyond me. They did a 4K transfer, that's a known fact. Maybe Richard Haines can chime in with his thoughts on why this doesn't look better.

It's not grain either. I actually like a little grain, it makes it look like a movie to me and not a Video Cam recording... It is possible this is the best they could do with the film stock. I mentioned the early Bond flicks and how well they look after a 4K transfer, they look so good you'd swear that you were looking at HD when it's just SDVD... so why was Dirty Harry so bad in some scenes?

My guess and speculation is that Siegal didn't have a 'Bond' budget, and there are different grades and qualities of film. It makes sense to me that the Bond flicks would have been shot on the best film available, as well as properly stored in temperature controlled vaults. Dirty Harry most likely was shot on whatever the budget allowed, which may not have been the best quality film stock available. Nobody really expected Dirty Harry to become what it did, so I can see the studio saying we'll pay for this, but not for that.

Richard, if you're out there and read this, let us know your thoughts.

Again, the transfer still looks better than my SDVD version, even with the SDVD upconverted. For $23 I didn't mind buying this one at all, and the book is really cool. I'll wait until I see my brother's boxed set and decide if I want to get them all on BD or just settle for the best Dirty Harry on Bluray and just upconvert the rest.

[Richard W. Haines]

Just read the review. Very fine.

In terms of the transfer, it all has to do with the condition of the negative. The Bond negatives
were processed and stored in England which has very good lab work. Even though "Dirty Harry"
was a Technicolor movie, that lab was getting sloppy in the seventies and was in the process
of moving into Eastmancolor to save costs. In fact, only three years after this picture, they
shut down their famous dye transfer line which is what made Technicolor "glorious" and shut
down their lab and moved into another facility at a new location and only offered the same
Eastmancolor as other facilities even though they claimed they were 'still the best name in
color' which sounded a bit desperate. They ended up being no better or worse than any
other Eastmancolor lab in the US (Metrocolor, Pathe etc.) which is to say sloppy and substandard
back then.

In any event, the Bond negatives were carefully stored and processed so when they digitally
scanned them in at 4K, they looked as good as they did back in the sixties. Obviously the
"Dirty Harry" negative wasn't as meticulously processed or stored and while you can do a lot
with digital restoration in terms of color correcting fully exposed pre-print and removing wear,
there is less you can do with underexposed negatives which tends to affect night scenes
which get a little murky and lose their 'snap'. The original dye transfer Technicolor prints of
the movie looked fine but only film collectors have those now (studios rarely save prints of
movies, just the negatives) so they had to work with the surviving elements 'as is'. Perhaps
as the digital machinery keeps being upgraded and changed, they'll find a way of adding contrast
and detail in underexposed scenes from pre-1983 negatives that have faded and lost some quality.

Post 1983 negatives are labeled as 'low fade' which is an improvement over the earlier 'quick
fade' Eastmancolor negatives but still a far cry from the 'no fade' Technicolor prints and earlier
3 strip cameras which photographed each color record in black and white. So far 1983 negatives
and prints are holding their color but of course they don't look as good in terms of the release
prints as dye transfer copies.


I liked "Dirty Harry" when I saw it when it came out and in revivals in the New York repertory
cinemas of the late seventies. This movie and "Death Wish" were what you might call cinematic
backlashses to the counter culture cinema that dominated at the time as well as the Warren Court that gave all sorts of extra protection for criminals, often at the expense of the safety of regular citizens which is why vigilante movies were popular back then.

[wbassett]

Thanks for the explaination Richard, I thought that might be a big reason why some scenes don't look as good as others.

You're right about the 70's and how movies were changing their tone. Don't get me wrong, I still love the classics, but they sometimes tend to be a little too stereo typed and even the dialog can cause an unintended chuckle when viewed now.

Death Wish is another movie I liked, and felt the sequels became more like a parody of the original. Might have been an interesting movie concept to have Harry go after Kersey(Wrong cities I know... but Kersey did move around a lot and could have landed in San Francisco). It could have been 'Heat' long before 'Heat' If written and filmed right, it could have been something both actors could have sunk their teeth in!

Anyway, I don't buy many movies on Bluray, especially since the format war is over and I've seen prices go up a bit. Even with some transfer issues, this is still a worthwhile addition to anyone's Bluray collection.

[wbassett]

Just talked to my brother who has the Bluray boxed set.

He said the Magnum Force transfer was pretty bad and the rest were 'okay' but not as good as the first movie. In other words it's not a stellar Bluray transfer and I would say if you're an Eastwood fan, get the first movie and upconvert the rest.

[Richard W. Haines]

The problem with high definition, as has been discussed in other posts, is that it exagerates
any flaws in the material that it's derived from. The sharper and more fine grain the image
is in the digital domain, the more obvious the grain or murkiness is in the film. So don't be surprised when movies
like "American Graffiti" come out on blu ray and are almost unwatchable because of the low
lighting in night scenes (which is the bulk of it) and substandard Techniscope format (basically
the equivalent of a wide 16mm image blown up to 35mm scope ratio). The Technicolor dye transfer prints filled in the grain and improved the contrast but high definition will make the problems very obvious and distracting unless they can develop a program to compensate for grain and poor contrast by then. They do have a grain reducer now but it can give the movie a very unnatural appearance.


In the seventies, 'grain' was 'in' so to speak and many movies that had a murky
appearance garnered critical accolades (i.e. "McCabe and Mrs. Miller") because it
was so different that classic studio cinematography. Today, it just looks like bad camerawork.

In terms of the content of the Eastwood movies, let's not forget our perpetual
culture war. In the late sixties, the counter culture dominated but it was
a short lived victory and beginning in the seventies, that worldview began
to fizzle out. By the late seventies, the counter culture was dead but it
made a comeback in the nineties and continues today with the movies of
Spike Lee, Tim Robbins and Michael Moore vs. mainstream movies made by
Spielberg, Lucas, Ron Howard and others. That's not to suggest that these people
are enemies but they are define cinema differently. The first group defines
cinema as a forum for political activism and the second as an entertainment
medium. Back in the sixties and seventies it was the same conflict and of
course there are movies that combine both forms. "Dirty Harry" was entertainment
but it did have a political slant compared to other cop films. I prefer
it when overt political posturing is not in a film because it will date the movie
as times change. If it's there at all, it should be very subtle. That's just my
personal preference of course.