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WARNER

MOVIE INFO

Director:
Ted Post
Cast:
Clint Eastwood, Hal Holbrook, David Soul
Writing Credits:
John Milius, Michael Cimino

Synopsis:
Dirty Harry is on the trail of vigilante cops who are not above going beyond the law to kill the city's undesirables.

Box Office:
Domestic Gross
$39,768,000.

MPAA:
Rated R

DISC DETAILS
Presentation:
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audio:
English Dolby 5.1
English Dolby TrueHD 5.1
French Dolby 1.0
Spanish Dolby 2.0
German Dolby 1.0
Portuguese Dolby 1.0
Italian Dolby 1.0
Castillian Dolby 1.0
Subtitles:
English
Spanish
French
German
Italian
Castillian
Dutch
Portuguese
Danish
Finnish
Norwegian
Swedish
Closed-captioned
Supplements Subtitles:
English
Spanish
French
German
Italian
Castillian
Dutch
Portuguese
Danish
Finnish
Norwegian
Swedish

Runtime: 123 min.
Price: $14.98
Release Date: 12/16/08

Bonus:
• Audio Commentary with Screenwriter John Milius
• “A Moral Right” Featurette
• “The Hero Cop” Featurette
• Trailer Gallery


PURCHASE @ AMAZON.COM

EQUIPMENT
-LG OLED65C6P 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart OLED TV
-Marantz SR7010 9.2 Channel Full 4K Ultra HD AV Surround Receiver
-Panasonic DMP-BD60K Blu-Ray Player
-Chane A2.4 Speakers
-SVS SB12-NSD 12" 400-watt Sealed Box Subwoofer


RELATED REVIEWS


Magnum Force [Blu-Ray] (1973)

Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (May 9, 2019)

For the second entry in the “Dirty Harry” series, we head to 1973’s Magnum Force. Accused of complicity in a murder, labor leader Carmine Ricca (Richard Devon) escapes conviction on a technicality. This doesn’t sit well with many, and apparently a police officer is one of the unhappy folks, as a motorcycle cop murders Ricca and his cohorts.

As a reaction to his heavy-handed work on the Scorpio case in the prior flick, Inspector Harry Callahan winds up on stakeout duty. Despite his boss Lt. Briggs’ (Hal Holbrook) insistence that Harry stay away the Ricca investigation, Callahan and new partner “Early” Smith (Felton Perry) can’t help but give it a look.

When the mysterious motorcycle cop strikes again a couple of times, Briggs brings Harry back onto homicide. We follow Callahan’s pursuit of this far-reaching assassin.

Since Dirty Harry had a mix of ups and downs, I hoped Force might provide a more coherent experience. Unfortunately, it suffers from even greater inconsistency, for Force comes with all the same negatives as Harry but without as many positives.

To be honest, I find it tough to come up with a lot of good aspects of Force. Cartoonier and less powerful than its predecessor, the sequel tends to come across like a dumbed-down take on its subjects.

That primarily affects Harry himself. Love him or hate him, the character created a strong impression in the first flick, but the Harry of Force feels much less impressive. I don’t want to call this flick’s Harry a neutered version of the role, but he sure lacks the same cold hardness.

I get the impression that after the success of Harry, the filmmakers decided to tame the material for a broader audience. At times the Callahan of Force almost feels like a James Bond wannabe.

We see Harry role-play to nab baddies and he suddenly becomes a real chick magnet. The first flick showed no romance of any sort, but now women throw themselves at him all the time.

Maybe there’s nothing wrong with that choice. After all, Eastwood’s an attractive, charismatic guy, so why wouldn’t the ladies love him? I just feels wrong to me, though, given Harry’s almost monomaniacal obsession with law and order in the first flick.

Here Harry tries to be all things to all people, and it doesn’t work. We get a watered down, dull Harry too much of the time.

I criticized the storytelling of Harry as unfocused, but it seems tight and direct compared to the rambling Force. The tale becomes awfully episodic, so when it finally starts to concentrate on the plot I summed up, it feels almost like an afterthought. This side of things fails to develop very well, and various “twists” prove awfully predictable.

I wasn’t wild about Dirty Harry, but I thought it was unusual and dynamic enough to work. On the other hand, Force feels… well, forced, as if it exists just to make some money and create a franchise. I guess that tactic worked, but it doesn’t make me like the movie.


The Disc Grades: Picture B-/ Audio B/ Bonus C-

Magnum Force appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 2.35:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. Though the picture held up pretty well given its age, it seemed less consistent than I’d like.

Sharpness was an occasional concern. Much of the film showed good delineation, but sporadic exceptions occurred. Our first glimpse of Hal Holbrook suffered from an odd gauziness, and other shots came across as a bit ill-defined. Most of the flick looked fine, though, so don’t expect a great deal of softness.

No issues with jagged edges or shimmering appeared, but I noticed light edge haloes and some source flaws. At times, I witnessed examples of specks and marks. These stayed fairly infrequent, though.

Colors were decent. As was the case for Harry, Force went with a natural palette, but the sequel’s tones lacked the same vivacity. They looked acceptable but they failed to deliver much vivacity.

Blacks were more consistent, at least, as they showed nice depth, and shadows provided good clarity. All of this was enough for a “B-“.

I really liked the Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack of Dirty Harry, and the audio for Magnum Force seemed nearly as good. My only criticism connected to dialogue.

Speech tended to sound a bit dull and/or metallic throughout the film. While the lines remained intelligible, they never appeared natural.

The other audio elements proved more satisfying. Music was dynamic and vivid, and effects showed solid reproduction. They were consistently accurate and full, and low-end response seemed deep.

Just like with Harry, Force boasted a lively soundfield. Music again demonstrated fine stereo imaging, and effects added a lot of pizzazz to the proceedings.

The effects moved around the room in a convincing manner. This meant vehicles like cars, bikes and planes managed to use the speakers well.

A fair amount of localized material cropped up in the surrounds, and the whole package combined to create a fine soundscape. The lackluster speech distracted me enough to knock down my grade to a “B”, but I still thought the effort was quite good for its age.

How did the Blu-ray compare to the DVD version? Audio got a minor boost, as the lossless TrueHD track worked a bit better than its lossy counterpart. However, the restrictions of the 45-year-old source prevented major improvements.

Visuals looked somewhat tighter and more vivid. However, the Blu-ray still came with a lot of the DVD’s drawbacks, so it only turned into a moderate upgrade and not a huge one.

The Blu-ray duplicates the DVD’s extras, and we open with an audio commentary from screenwriter John Milius. He offers a running, screen-specific discussion that looks at challenges related to sequels, story and script, and some reflections on the era’s political climate.

Milius is an outspoken guy, but he’s a dull audio commentary participant. During too much of the track, he simply offers pithy remarks about the film.

Milius also focuses on his fascination with guns and spouts some of his political thoughts such as when he opines that we need “white collar death squads”. (Milius is a Stone Age conservative.)

Actual insights remain few and far between. He almost tells of an alternate story concept but cuts himself off for no apparent reason.

Milius does go into some problems with the flick and lets us know that the Drano scene was meant to be heard, not seen, though he doesn’t tell us why the director opted to show it instead. The handful of interesting comments can’t outweigh all the dull elements, unfortunately, and this ends up as a pretty poor discussion.

Two featurettes follow. A Moral Right: The Politics of Dirty Harry fills 24 minutes, 15 seconds as we hear from Milius, Clint Eastwood, critic Richard Schickel, authors William Beard and Neal King, filmmakers Shane Black, Jay Cocks, Peter Hyams, David Ayer, Michael Butler, George Gallo, Joe Carnahan, Allen and Albert Hughes, John Lee Hancock and Steven E. de Souza, and actors Tyne Daly, Andy Robinson, Reni Santoni, Hal Holbrook, and Michael Madsen.

“Right” looks at reactions to Dirty Harry and related controversies, themes, and how Harry fits his era. “Right” may appear on the Force Blu-ray, but it concerns itself mostly with Dirty Harry.

Since the Harry Callahan character doesn’t change a ton over the five movies, I guess this piece’s placement here is fine, but I can’t say I take much from it. Harry isn’t a particularly deep personality, so the show struggles to fill its running time with worthwhile notes. The concept of Callagan’s politics and social impact can be stimulating, but this program just lacks much to make it interesting.

The Hero Cop: Yesterday and Today lasts eight minutes, three seconds and provides a vintage featurette. It looks at some prior examples of law enforcement issues and also takes us to the Force set. Other than a smattering of decent shots from the production, it’s a pretty dull piece.

The set finishes with a Trailer Gallery. It includes ads for Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact and The Dead Pool.

The “Dirty Harry” franchise takes a steep decline with the limp, ineffective Magnum Force. Among other problems, the film tames its lead character and suffers from a dull story. As for the Blu-ray, it offers decent picture, pretty good audio and generally bland supplements. This is my pick for the worst “Dirty Harry” movie, and the Blu-ray could use an upgrade as

To rate this film visit the prior review of MAGNUM FORCE

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