AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

FrogGlace In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

Shawn Watson The longest Dirty Harry movie, clocking in at 124 minutes, Magnum Force actually gives us a plot with multiple threads to follow, and is, as a result, a much better movie than the original. This time around Harry must solve a series of brutal vigilante murders, gradually narrowing it down to a group of corrupt cops. He does actual detective work this time and uses his cunning to track the bad guys. The trick with deliberately missing his mark at the shooting range to retrieve the incriminating bullet was a smart move. There was nothing like this in the, frankly overrated, first movie.The violence, even by today's standards, is graphic and upsetting. Seeing corpses writhe in agony after getting shot directly in the forehead, is hard to watch. Imagine suffering such a would and, knowing you were dying, lost control of your limbs. You don't see this in movies anymore. Gun violence is often overplayed and made to look cool while the grim reality of being murdered in this horrible way is rarely seen. I appreciate the movie for having the moxie to show us a more realistic depiction.Director Ted Post, who directed Eastwood in Hang 'Em High, uses the anamorphic Panavision framing very well and there are multiple awesome compositions in the film. The slow, laid-back pace of Don Siegel is gone and the movie feels broader in scope while at the same time being an ironic response to the negative critical backlash that the first received. There's more weight and wit in Magnum Force, there's more to talk about, giving it higher re-watch value.I know my opinion is controversial, but Magnum Force is simply more enjoyable and prompts deeper debate.

connorbbalboa The ending of the first Dirty Harry (an excellent film) saw Clint Eastwood's Inspector Harry Callahan kill the disgusting and too-evil-to-live Scorpio and in turn, throw his badge away, signifying that he will never come back to the San Francisco police force and go on killing bad guys as a vigilante. Surely this would mean that there won't be any sequels...right? Wrong. Harry is back on the force and continuing his police work despite disobeying the orders of his superiors in Magnum Force, directed by Ted Post (Hang 'Em High, also with Eastwood; Beneath the Planet of the Apes), and sees him (temporarily) re-assigned to Stakeout instead of Homicide. Here, he is investigating the murders of many of the city's most notorious criminals, including narcotics kingpins and pimps (one of whom murders a prostitute with drain cleaner in one of the film's more graphic scenes). During the film, he meets a group of young rookie cops, including a fresh-faced Tim Matheson (Eric Stratton from Animal House (1978)) who admire Harry very deeply (not in a sexual way, mind you). As the film presses on, Harry believes that they are the ones doing the killings, and he is forced to confront his own ideas about violating the rights of the criminals when they are taken to the extreme.What I want to get out of the way is that the major problem I have with this film is that no matter how many Dirty Harry sequels you make, I can't get over the fact that Harry threw away his badge at the end of the first film after killing Scorpio. Did he decide to come back after a short while? And shouldn't his superiors have been more critical of him for disobeying his orders (like firing him or prosecuting him)? Regardless, neither the Scorpio killing nor Harry throwing his badge away is mentioned in the whole film. Another issue is that during the film, Harry develops a casual romance with a young woman named Sunny, who seems to have the hots for him right away. It's cute, I will admit, but like with Harry's romance with Sam in The Dead Pool (1988), it's glossed over quickly.After the problems I highlighted, the rest is pretty damn great. The film keeps up the action and graphic violence of its predecessor, especially during two great scenes in a store robbery stakeout and a shootout with a gang of criminals at a food plant. The score by Lalo Schifrin is also catchy, with the opening theme being the standout. It's pure 70s style tunes. And even though Harry's relationship with Sunny is glossed over, the film also shows Harry's (not romantic) relationship with the wife of his friend, Charlie (Mitchell Ryan from High Plains Drifter and Lethal Weapon), who holds the safe beliefs as Harry, but is a bit more unhinged about the situation, best described when his wife mentioned an occasion when he played Russian Roulette with himself. The scenes between Harry and Charlie's wife feel appropriately calm and gives audiences a chance to see Harry as a human being more than his scenes with Sunny. Hal Holbrook makes a great turn as Lt. Briggs, and Eastwood himself makes Harry a tough, but understandable and human guy the second time around. It's also interesting to see Harry delve into more police work than he did in the first film, especially when he's using Ballistics to match up the bullets found at the murder scenes to the weapon used, and then the killers.Now I want to discuss the best thing about this film: the themes of taking vigilantism too far, and whether following the system is the right decision. The first film was about how maybe democracy needs to be put aside in order for the police to properly catch criminals, and that maybe the criminals are given too much leeway by the law. Part of the reason this film was created was to answer to the negative criticism towards the first film about Harry maybe being "fascist." However, it doesn't just feel like a simple throwaway piece that the film just inserts. It feels like the film really wants you to think about how it would be to live in a society with squads of killer cops and whether their current democratic system is really a good system to live under.Harry says at one point that he hates the system but will stick with it until something better comes along because he has no choice. We can all get the sense that there are quite a few people in real-life living in this country that hate the system as well, but unless they want to go something so extreme they'll get jailed or worse, they don't have a choice either. When it comes to vigilantism, the film looks at and then makes you think further about how far it could go before it goes too far. Harry discusses how it would be excessive to kill somebody because their dog takes a dump on their neighbor's lawn.Even that's not the worst of it; there's also the possibility of someone killing somebody simply because that person doesn't like the way the other looks at him. Even the killer cops fit so well into the message: more people today are nervous of cops because of police brutality; how safe would they feel if there was a whole squad of them just going out and shooting bad guys dead, point blank? In short, watch this sequel. Like the first film, it does its utmost to make you think about our legal system and whether criminals should be given much leeway by it. It's action-packed to the max and it is a solid sequel that can be a great companion piece to the original Dirty Harry. "It's all in a day's work for Inspector Harry Callahan."

glenn-aylett This is a more than competent follow up to Dirty Harry, where a group of rookie cops are taking out gangsters, pimps and other low lives in San Francisco. However, when Dirty Harry refuses to join them, they turn on him, planting a bomb in his mailbox and killing his partner. Also it seems they have an intrinsic dislike of the permissive society and take out a group of people at a pool party and have an ally in Harry's boss, Lt Briggs, played by Hal Holbrook, who captures Harry at gunpoint when he finds out he's not supporting the young vigilantes. In Harry's eyes, for all the system is rotten, vigilante law is not the answer and he has to uphold the law, where you'd expect him to support the police death squad.Magnum Force is good in other respects, the brutal shooting of a gangster who is acquitted for murder by one of the renegade cops is unexpected, the chase scene at the end where Harry dispenses of the vigilante cops on a disused aircraft carrier( including karate chopping one of them to death) is first rate, and Harry also stops an aircraft hijack. As ever, Lalo Schifrin provides a first class soundtrack and look out for David Soul in his first starring role as one of the renegade cops.Again there are some memorable quotes, most notably one where Harry's Japanese American neighbour asks him what she has to do to get into bed with him, " just knock at the door", is his quick response in one of the quickest seductions ever. Also as the film ends and Harry's boss is blown up by a car bomb planted by Harry, he states, " man's gotta know his limitations". Overall 9/10 in what is an excellent sequel to Dirty Harry.

Prismark10 Oh no, it is my television heroes as the bad guys. This view was probably echoed around the country when Magnum Force was first shown on British television in the early 1980s as it inferred that David Soul from Starsky & Hutch and Robert Urich from Vegas could be vigilante cops.Magnum Force is the first sequel to Dirty Harry. Clint Eastwood reprises his iconic role as the no nonsense San Francisco detective Harry Callahan. Eastwood was mindful of the criticism levelled at his character that he was a vigilante cop and this film was a response that labelling Harry as a vigilante is misconceived. Clint Eastwood always maintained that the Harry was critical of organisations and the bureaucracy that they carried. They simply would not let police to their jobs, possibly reflecting Eastwood's own libertarian views.In fact the plot really can be distilled to two people's views of organisations. Harry and his abrasive boss Lt Briggs (Hal Holbrook) on the face of it the anti-Dirty Harry, the cop who has never pulled a gun in the line of duty. Harry knows the system is broken but works within it. He might edge close to the line, even slightly cross it (which he seemed to have done in Dirty Harry) but respects the rule of law even if its only grudgingly. It looks like Briggs also realises that the justice system is broken but has a different solution.Watching Magnum Force again almost three decades later I expected the film to have aged. It certainly has a different depiction of San Francisco than the more tourist friendly picture postcard setting you get these days. Even the crooked segment of Lombard Street does not look like that anymore. What is striking though is the how action packed the film is, its absolutely modernist. I would say that this might be the precursor to the 1980s action thrillers.There was a time in action films where things moved slowly, you established settings, character and there would be a lull in between action scenes where you have quieter moments. Just look at Steve McQueen's Bullitt made a few years earlier and also set in San Francisco.In Magnum Force things are happening all the time. Bad guys getting bumped off by someone dressed up as a cop in a motorcycle. When we see Harry he gets into action pretty quickly as well, dressing up as a pilot to deal with a plane hijacking, later on we see him on a stakeout when a store is held up. The film is very well paced with incidents and action at regular intervals. Credit for that has to go to the writers more than the director Ted Post in my opinion.The film was written by Michael Cimino and John Milius. Both were the new wave of infant terrible of 1970s cinema which also included Scorsese, Spielberg , Coppola and De Palma. John Milius has always been a gun nut with a fascination with the military. He is regarded as the most right wing person in Hollywood. A film critic once said that's like calling someone out for being the tallest player in a professional basketball team!Cimino would go on to work with Eastwood the following year in Thunderbolt & Lightfoot which he wrote and directed. Cimino would achieve acclaim with The Deer Hunter and infamy through his follow up film, Heaven's Gate. He has not directed a feature film since 1996. There have been rumours he now lives life as a woman. What is true is that he has had a lot of bad plastic surgery.The film is called Magnum Force but during the climax notice that Harry dispatches the villains without once resorting to his gun. This is deliberate, Eastwood wanted to show Harry was more than a cop with a big gun that he had guile. It also reinforces the anti- vigilante message of the film. The ending is a little drawn out for my liking.One other thing about Harry in this film was sex appeal. Maybe he should be called X rated Harry as women just keep falling for him. Eastwood in his Dollar trilogy films was never into the ladies. That came in the movies in the 1970s which the star exploited as Eastwood became something of a sex symbol. I am sure it was also an ego thing on the part of Eastwood. It was the only thing that was odd about it, the Harry of Dirty Harry never seemed to have the social skills of being such a womaniser.The film is different in tone and style from Dirty Harry which is the best of the bunch. Magnum Force is a very good sequel and much better than the ones that followed.