Magnum Force
Dirty Harry is on the trail of vigilante cops who are not above going beyond the law to kill the city’s undesirables.
- Director: Ted Post
- Genre:Action / Crime / Drama / Thriller
- Runtime:123 minutes
Cast
Clint Eastwood : Insp. ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan
Hal Holbrook : Lt. Neil Briggs
Mitch Ryan : Officer Charlie McCoy (as Mitchell Ryan)
David Soul : Officer John Davis
Tim Matheson : Officer Phil Sweet
Carmine Ricca (Richard Devon), a known organized-crime kingpin, is driven away from court after being declared not guilty for the massacre of a family. Soon after, a motorcycle traffic cop stops Ricca’s car and begins to write out a ticket for the driver, saying he had “crossed the double-line”. Suddenly, the patrolman pulls his service revolver, a .357 Magnum, shoots all four men in the car, then rides away.
Later, “Dirty” Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) and his partner Earlington Smith (Felton Perry) stop by the crime scene, but Harry is no longer working in homicide due to his handling of the Scorpio case in the first film. Harry clashes with his new superior, Lieutenant Briggs (Hal Holbrook), who orders him to return to his assigned stakeout. Harry instead takes his new partner to the airport for the “best hamburgers in town”.
At the airport, he foils an aircraft hijacking, by impersonating a pilot. When one of the hijackers is distracted as Harry goes through the motions of preparing the plane for take-off, he slams on the brakes and takes the hijacker’s gun after punching him unconscious, and kills the first one.
Back at the police academy, Harry encounters his friend Charlie McCoy (Mitchell Ryan), a fellow cop who is despondent, having just separated from his wife. At a shooting range, Harry meets a group of rookie motorcycle police officers: Philip Sweet (Tim Matheson), John Davis (David Soul), “Red” Astrachan (Kip Niven), and Michael Grimes (Robert Urich). The next day a motorcycle cop attacks a pool party being held by a mobster, using a satchel charge and machine gun to kill multiple people.
Harry visits McCoy’s wife and children and learns McCoy has been suicidal and living with a stripper. McCoy’s wife makes advances on Harry, but is interrupted by the noisy play of her children. Harry then gets a phone call from Early, who informs him a robbery at the store where they’ve been on stakeout is about to take place. Harry travels to the store and enters the back way, viewing the suspects through a one-way glass. The robbery takes place, but Harry, Early, and another officer foil the robbers, killing all but one.
Later that night, a pimp (Albert Popwell) kidnaps one of his prostitutes (Margaret Avery) and kills her in a taxicab, and the next morning a motorcycle traffic cop killer pulls him over underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and kills him. Following this killing, Harry and Early are transferred back to Homicide and Harry visits the city morgue with Briggs and his superior, Captain Avery. When Harry examines a bullet from the pimp’s car and sees that the pimp had offered a traffic cop a bribe, he begins to suspect someone the crook would never suspect, and his suspicions nag at him further when Briggs assigns Harry to tail Frank Palancio, once one of Ricca’s right-hand killers. Read more