The Rookie (1990)

I knew I wanted to review watch and review The Rookie after I was done with the Dirty Harry movies because it seemed like a natural bookend to the series I did back in March. Well, it took me about three months, but I finally got around to writing about Clint’s ‘90s action bomb. What other blogger, I ask, would be so dedicated to delivering a piece on something as insignificant as this movie? If you’re at all curious about the movie by the time you finish this, it’s playing on Netflix Instant right now. Enjoy.

During Spring Break, I decided to go through the Dirty Harry Blu-Ray set and a funny thing happened: I got the urge to watch more of Clint shooting bad guys. That’s a good thing, right? Now, as I stated in my reviews back in March, I’m not necessarily the biggest fan when it comes to Clint behind the camera – and really, as we found with the directors like Ted Post and Buddy Van Horn, even if he isn’t given “directed by” credit, Clint still directs his movies – but I’m a sucker for Dirty Harry shooting hippies and crooked cops and other types of baddies with his .44 Magnum. I looked back at other Clint action films while I was watching the Dirty Harry series, and the one that stuck out the most to me – probably because it seemed like a natural progression for Eastwood even though he had retired the Harry character with The Dead Pool – was his 1990 film The Rookie. Unlike The Gauntlet (classic Clint action film) or Tightrope (a nice break from the mold for Clint as it delved a little darker into the psycho-sexual thriller subgenre) – two films made while he was still making Dirty Harry movies – The Rookie is a giant piece of shit of a movie. In fact, it’s the argument against those of us that pine for the “good old days” in modern action films. There’s a lot of us out there that decry the modern action film as too spastic (Bourne), serious (Nolan’s Batman), or self-aware (Crank 2), but The Rookie is proof that it wasn’t all John Matrix quipping as he single-handedly destroyed an army, Riggs’ and Murtough’s antics, or even Clint’s own (usually) straight-forward approach to the action film; no, that nostalgic twinge for the good ‘ol days of the action film lends itself to certain blind spots about the ‘90s action film (The Last Boy Scout, anyone?), and Eastwood’s The Rookie is certainly one of the worst offenders of that ever so subgenre-rich decade.

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The Dead Pool

I’m of two minds about The Dead Pool: on one hand, it’s a fitting end to the series as it doesn’t take itself too seriously and has fun with Callahan’s final outing; on the other hand, it’s sad to see the series switch gears stylistically on its last entry, turning Dirty Harry into just another action hero of the already crowded pool of the 1980s. Perhaps the studio wasn’t pleased with the darker subject matter that Eastwood tackled in Sudden Impact; whatever the case, The Dead Pool has not just the weakest premise and villain of the entire series but also the goofiest. Seen in any other context than a riff on the genre Eastwood helped create, The Dead Pool instills the type of indifference that shouldn't exist in such a successfully visceral film series. 

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Sudden Impact

“It must make you feel good to make old, ugly things right again.” This is a line uttered halfway through Sudden Impact in response to artist Jennifer Spencer (Sondra Locke) who is restoring an old carousel on the pier. This line of dialogue also seems applicable to the film itself which was the first Dirty Harry film to be released in seven years, and the first to be officially directed by Eastwood. Sudden Impact is an attempt to not only revive the series but to also restore its reputation and image after the so-so (so-called) final film of the series, The Enforcer. Sudden Impact is a return to form even if it is a bit too long and glossier than the films released in the ‘70s were. It’s a hard-hitting, violent, exhilarating – albeit cartoonish at times – and frustratingly uneven revival for the most famous San Francisco homicide detective and his .44 Magnum. It must have made Eastwood feel good to know that he could still rake in the dollars with this character; it’s just a shame that he seemed content allowing Harry to flounder from scene to scene until the final hour when the film presents one of the more interesting conflicts for Harry.

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The Enforcer

It is inevitable that when something is as big a box office hit and cultural phenomena as Dirty Harry, that countless imitators and unnecessary cash-in sequels will follow. However, in 1973’s Magnum Force, Eastwood and co. sidestepped a lot of the pitfalls of the sequel to create a film with an intriguing idea that completely flipped the coin on Inspector Callahan, making him a more conflicted character while still adhering to his no-nonsense moral standards; you’re either right or you’re wrong according to Callahan, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a hippy serial killer or rogue cops. So what ground could there possibly be left to cover that wouldn’t seem like recycling what the series had done prior? The Enforcer, the third – and what was supposed to be final – entry in the Dirty Harry series, doesn’t do anything to sour the previous two films of the series, but it also doesn’t do anything extraordinary to cause it to stand out; it’s just kind of there: an efficiently made cop thriller that happens to have one of our favorite movie characters as its protagonist shootin’ bad guys and blowing stuff up real good.  

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Magnum Force

The best thing about Magnum Force – aside from being one of those rare sequels that can more than hold its own – is that it gets the viewer to rethink and reassess the original Dirty Harry. It has a lot of the things we come to expect from the subgenre and from sequels in general: it tries to go bigger with its stunts and chases (which, really, the first film didn’t have), it’s a bit more bloated, and it has a lot of those cliché interactions between the rogue cop and his superiors. But it also has a lot of ideas in its head; it’s more than just a cash-in (even though it did make more than the original). Magnum Force has ideas and allows us to look at the original with a better understanding of its themes thanks to its tackling of and response to the criticisms the original film received.

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Dirty Harry

The controversy and cultural impact surrounding Don Siegel’s 1971 film is well documented. We all know about Pauline Kael’s quote and about the critical backlash against the film’s pro-gun, pro-vigilante point of view; however, what sometimes gets missed in all of that is the simple fact that Dirty Harry is a seminal and important film. One of the best films of the ‘70s, Dirty Harry is essentially an exploitation movie financed by a big time studio with its biggest star in the lead role. It looks like an exploitation movie, it sounds like an exploitation movie (the music is one of the most memorable things about the film), and it plays like an exploitation movie. What Siegel and Eastwood and screenwriters Harry Julian and R.M. Fink have done is not just create an iconic character that spouts memorable lines (although, Dirty Harry spawned many sequels and bad knockoffs) as he points his .44 Magnum at bad guys, they created a time capsule film that speaks to the chaos and the rapidly changing America of the ‘60s; however, what makes the film still relevant today is in the fact that the filmmakers ultimately made a film that is eerily prescient for today’s America.

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