Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

After watching 'The Enforcer', the third in the Dirty Harry series, which is little more than a shoddy TV movie, it was a relief to watch this, its predecessor.   Right from the get-go it's clear that the direction, cinematography and score are of a high quality. San Francisco has never looked more alluring than in this film I would suggest; for example, at one point we are treated to a gorgeous view from the top of a high apartment block, of the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance.  There's no need to worry about the screenplay either, credited to the intriguing pairing of John Milius and Michael Cimino. They have the neat idea of taking Harry's unconventional approach to policing to its logical conclusion.  There is a cop, or someone pretending to be a cop, killing (or rather, executing) criminals who have evaded the normal justice system. At first both we and Harry suspect a long-time friend of his on the force, Charlie, who's definitely displaying...

This is the third film in the Dirty Harry series, and diminishing returns have set in despite some attempts to freshen up the formula. The pre-credits sequence where we meet the Chief Bad Guy (a psycho killer, what else?) is OK, as far as it goes.   We then get the obligatory sequence, immediately after the credits, where Harry deals with a random crime he stumbles upon by behaving totally unprofessionally, in this case driving a car into a liquor store where hostages are being held, and then being affronted when he is bawled out and transferred to Personnel. So far, so predictable. Then to shake things up we and Harry are introduced to of all things a woman (Kate) who absurdly is applying to join Homicide despite no on-the-street experience. She's played by Tyne Daly who's great in the part and the main reason to watch this film, because she's actually taking the role seriously.   Harry of course gets reassigned to Homicide with Kate as his partner. She's replacing ...

Rather embarrassingly I sometimes confuse this film with ‘The Eagle Has Landed’. Admittedly they are both classic WW2 adventures with similar titles - but even so. This film is described by Wikipedia as an ‘’action adventure war thriller spy film" which hints at why it is so beloved - over its 155 minutes it manages to span three or four popular genres. Which is not to say it needs all that runtime - it would be easy to cut 20 minutes or so.  For example, the sequences after  the moment when the chief goal of the mission has been accomplished could surely be trimmed. It is a measure of Richard Burton’s star power in the mid-1960s that all he needed to do was express a wish to be the lead in an action film (for Elizabeth Taylor’s children to enjoy) and hey presto a film studio makes it happen. I had assumed that this film was an adaptation of an existing Alistair Maclean novel but in fact he wrote the screenplay to order, in just six weeks (he then converted it to a novel). Giv...

Rotten Tomatoes has this film at 70%, which I would say is rather generous of the critics. Leaving aside the film's attitudes to women, and to gays, which I guess were par for the course at the time, the film suffers from a weak plot which fails to establish any meaningful stakes. Dr Hemlock's mission, which brings him out of retirement, is to kill an assassin for no especially good reason, his motivation being a combination of greed and a desire to avenge the death of a friend.  Unfortunately neither the screenplay nor Clint Eastwood's acting is able to inject any life into his character, so it's hard to care. The only reason to watch this film is for the spectacular mountaineering photography, with Clint performing some of the stunts himself.   There is a training camp in the US which provides some breath-taking views, but the best visuals come at the film's climax when Hemlock is part of a team attempting the Eiger. One of the team (but who?) is Hemlock's tar...