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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dirty Harry and a female partner face hippie revolutionaries, 16 Oct 2004
In the original "Dirty Harry," Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) went after a serial killer and in the "Magnum Force" sequel he went after vigilante cops. To balance the latter, with its liberal nightmare, the third film in the series, "The Enforcer," offers up a conservative counterpart by having the villains be long-haired hippie freaks in something called the Ecumenical Liberation Army (i.e., think about Tanya, a.k.a. Patty Hearst, and the SLA). The obvious point is that when it comes to be judge, jury, and executioner, Dirty Harry does not make distinctions, ideological or otherwise. On the one hand the villains in "The Enforcer" are the weakest of any of the films in the series, but then the ELA is only Dirty Harry's target and not his opponent. That would be Kate Moore (Tyne Daly). The film begins with another example of how Dirty Harry has this bad habit of going after criminals on the streets of San Francisco in his own special way (hey, criminals ask for a car, Harry gives them a car), which always gets him punished by being transferred from Homicide to something less fun like the Personnel department, which is where he ends up this time, working on the promotion board. When he first Moore she is up for a promotion and although he puts her through the wringer, making clear his disdain for the idea that a woman can be a good cop, the politics of the time not only ensure that she gets promoted to fullfill some quota, but the ironic frame of the film means she ends up being Harry's partner when he is put back on the street so that he has a chance to go around and shoot more people, who, this time around at least, tend to start shooting first so that it is more self defense than natural orneriness when Harry starts firing back with greater accuracy and bigger bullets. Moore surprises Harry because she is not stupid, either in what she says or does, and manages to learn from him despite his attitude and unwillingness to explicitly teacher her anything about the job. Of course, in due time she actually saves Harry's life and he is forced to mumble something about how he could have a worse partner than Moore. Of course, in retrospect we are not surprised that Tyne Daly, who went on to win four Emmys (including three in a row) for her consummate performance as Mary Beth Lacey on "Cagney & Lacey), can hold her own with Clint Eastwood. Given how laughable the hippie revolutionaries are this film could have ended up being a big joke without her performance and the chemistry she has with the star, which is made all the more impressive by the fact that there is absolute nothing sexual about their relationship. The best parts of this movie are Harry and Moore establishing their relationship and becoming a team. These are the scenes that have not only the most humor, as Harry's chauvinism runs into Moore's competence, but also that actually bet beyond the facade of the character of Dirty Harry. This is what makes many of the action sequences, in contrast, to seem so cartoonish, especially in the film's end game when the mayor is kidnapped and Harry gets to use a bazooka during the final shootout on Alcatraz Island. It might seem strange that the interpersonal relationship is the best part of a Dirty Harry movie, but that is the part of "The Enforcer" that gets five stars, while the violence that was supposed to be the big attraction gets only a three (and the film almost loses another star because of the costumes and music, even more so now that they are both so outdated).
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