“Magnum Force” DVD Review

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“A man’s gotta know his limitations.” That’s my favorite Dirty Harry quote. It’s not quite as popular as “Do you feel lucky, punk?” which Harry never actually said. The line from the first film is “You’ve gotta ask yourself one question, ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?” But, like “Play it again, Sam,” or “Beam me up, Scotty,” misremembered quotes seep into our cultural subconscious and come to define the material regardless. That being said, “[a] man’s gotta know his limitations” better defines the Dirty Harry films than his other, more popular one-liners — even “Go ahead, make my day.” I think that’s why he repeats it three times during “Magnum Force,” movie two in the series. It’s Harry’s mantra, not just some sinister posturing for a hoodlum he has dead to rights.

In “Magnum Force,” Harry’s evidently fished his police badge out of the river and rejoined the SFPD. He’s since been taken off Homicide and put on Stakeout Squad. But when a series of mob killings has Lt. Briggs (Hal Holbrook) baffled and Harry’s gunned down the requisite amount of people during his stakeout assignment, Callahan is put on the investigation. He begins to suspect an old friend and colleague on the force is playing judge, jury and executioner. Then he comes to find out its a quartet of rookie cops who’ve taken Harry’s trigger-happy approach to 11.

I think I enjoyed this film, co-written by John Milius (”Apocalypse Now”) and Michael Cimino (”The Deer Hunter”), a little more than the first. In movie one, he was trying to catch a psychotic serial killer, but in this installment, his opponents aren’t all that far removed from himself. They’re in the same line of work, in fact. What makes Harry so right and them so wrong?

I also like how a crime in progress always seems to interrupt Harry’s lunch plans. In the first film, he’s enjoying a hot dog when a group of bank robbers across the street trip the alarm while trying to get away. This time he’s having a burger at the airport — the burgers there are the best in town, in point of fact — when a plane’s hijacked. San Francisco in the Dirty Harry films makes Gotham City look like Care-a-Lot. But Harry takes all this chaos in stride, albeit with a mouthful of food. These seemingly throwaway scenes — enough to pad out an entire Bruce Willis movie — just serve to further define Harry’s character. After all, the audience needs to know his limitations, too.

-Brad Lohan

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