Into the Blu

Dirty Harry

Posted on 23. Jun, 2008 by Bill Geiger in 1080p, 2.40:1, Action, Dolby Digital 1.0 (French), Dolby Digital 1.0 (Spanish), Dolby Digital 5.1 (English), Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (English), Reviews, Warner Bros.

I have seen plenty of Clint Eastwood films throughout my lifetime. I have always been a fan of his although I have yet to watch any of his Westerns, aside from The Unforgiven. Eastwood, for most of his career, has been the typical bad ass who you didn’t want to meet up with if you were doing something wrong. In Dirty Harry, Eastwood’s character was the trend setter of what movie cops were to become; the loaner who does things his own way regardless if anyone else likes it or not.

Dirty Harry stars Clint Eastwood as Inspector Harry Callahan. Harry is a San Francisco police officer who tends to do things his own way regardless if it is the wrong or right way of doing things. As long as the bad guy gets justice, he feels he has done the job to the best of his ability.
Harry’s foe in this film is Scorpio (Andy Robinson), a rooftop sniper who randomly kills just for the fun of it. Scorpio, after his second killing, demands a ransom of 100,000 dollars from the city. If he doesn’t get it, the girl he kidnapped and buried alive will end up suffocating.

It is Harry’s job to take down Scorpio and he is going to go by any means necessary, even if it means his badge.

Video

To be honest here, the first 5 opening minutes had me pretty worried. The dirt on the print, as well as rips and just horrible looking images had me thinking this was going to be a truly horrid transfer. It looked like bugs or specs of dirt were just randomly landing on the camera lens.

However, the transfer did improve much more. That isn’t to say it is perfect, far from it. With that being said, Warner Brothers, I am sure did the best they could to clean this up.

Grain is visible during the outdoor scenes. Some of it is most likely intentional but there is plenty that had no business being in the picture so that does take away from the viewing experience. I did notice some softness to many of the scenes as well, mostly early on in the film.

Indoor scenes are definitely better looking throughout the film. Skin tones look great and the image is really top notch.

Blacks were hit and miss. They sometimes appeared too bright and other times it was so black you couldn’t even see the actors. The best example of this was when Harry was in the alley way trying to track down someone. You couldn’t see him at all.

Audio

This Dirty Harry Blu ray disc features 8 different audio tracks. Warner Brothers gives you Dolby TrueHD English 5.1, Dolby Digital English 5.1, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese and Portuguese 1.0. I, of course, listened to the English which was not too bad. Surrounds were used throughout the film and were quite good but again, given the films age, nothing earth shattering. I had to crank up my volume to really get the feel of the action.

All of the dialogue came from the center channel.

Special Features

Dirty Harry: The Original

• Hosted by Robert Urich, this is a Featurette talking about the character of Dirty Harry. Clint Eastwood, Andy Robinson, Arnold Schwarzenegger among others discuss the impact the character of Dirty Harry had on themselves as well as others. This is a 30 minute Featurette from 2001.

Dirty Harry’s Way

• A short 7 minutes Featurette that is from 1971. Basically, it is showing the toughness of Dirty Harry and at what lengths he is willing to go.

The Long Shadow of Dirty Harry

• A new Featurette, similar to the 2001 Featurette where many writers/directors (Smokin’ Aces, Training Day, Gangs of New York among many others) and actors talk about the impact Dirty Harry had on them as well as the world of film.

Clint Eastwood: The Man from Malpaso

• This is a look back at all of the works of Clint Eastwood and opinions from Clint himself, as well as other peers, who praise his work. This runs just under 1 hour.

Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows

• Once again, this is a Clint Eastwood love fest from many actors, writers and directors praising his acting ability as well as his range. Clint also talks about his many films as well as his life growing up. This is partially narrated by Morgan Freeman.

Final Thoughts

This was my first time viewing Dirty Harry. I had seen The Dead Pool, which I enjoyed much more than this.

What I got out of it was mainly it was a simple premise. A somewhat rogue cop does what he wants to bring justice. It is that simple. The story is nothing special and the actors in the film, aside from Eastwood, don’t bring much to the table.

For example, you have a Mayor who first states he won’t pay killers and then, not 2 minutes later, decides to pay him what he wants. What the hell is that? Some of the dialogue and acting is really laughable.

For me, the movie was hard to enjoy because of those things but I did manage to enjoy the film overall. The action scenes were fun. Clint Eastwood was truly fantastic and I can’t help but repeat out of the blue part of his famous phrase, “this can blow your head clean off.” That is a great line and it is delivered with perfection each time it is said.

I would easily recommend this to any fan of Clint Eastwood.