Harry Callahan: I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?
According to the big photograph in their respective offices Bressler and the DA share the same pair of little daughters. See more...
Frank Sinatra was going to play Harry Callahan, but had to pull out due to illness. See more...
Directed by Don Siegel, starring Clint Eastwood (add more)
Genres: Action, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.
Harry waits on a bridge for the bus to jump on. When the bus comes closer he starts climbing down, but then, in a reflection in the windshield, he is still standing as before. [When Harry climbs down he climbs to a lower level of the bridge. When he is next seen in the reflection of the bus windshield, he is now standing at that lower level.]
When the car with the bank robbers runs over the fire hydrant the water fountain comes with quite a delay. [In my copy of the film, you can see the water erupt immediately as soon as the car hits the hydrant and starts to turn over. The only delay is the car turning completely on its side allowing the water to form a column shooting into the air.]
When Scorpio hijacks the school bus near the end, he says something to the effect that they are going to take Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the Santa Rosa Airport. Unfortunately, Sir Francis Drake Boulevard doesn't go anywhere near Santa Rosa, it heads west through Marin County and ends up near Pt. Reyes. They should have stayed on the highway and kept going north to get to Santa Rosa. [He's a deranged killer, and was in a panicked state...this is a character mistake.]
On the way to Jaffe's diner Harry passes by a car in which a bank robber is waiting for his accomplices to come out. After he places his order Harry asks Jaffe if this car's engine is running, which he could tell from the exhaust smoke the car is emitting. However, when Harry drove by there were no fumes, only now there are, but Harry hadn't looked back since. [The getaway driver could have started the car while Harry was walking into the diner.]
Corrected by William Bergquist
When Harry drives by a car in which a bank robber is waiting, there is a close-up of the driver lighting a cigarette and dropping the previous one on the ground. Here we count eight other butts, which, even if he is a fast smoker, mean that he has been waiting there for about an hour, which is a bit long for a decent bank robbery. [All of the robbers could have been waiting in the car finalizing their plans. Who's to say how long it took to rob the bank anyway? Their plans may have involved two drivers (one there, one away), and he's been there long enough to see them arrive too.]
Corrected by William Bergquist
On the whole Dirty Harry is a realistic movie, but the way Harry shoots Scorpio without any aiming while Scorpio is holding a boy in front of him is not only something no policeman, not even a tough guy like Harry, would risk, but beyond any fathomable shooting skills (Wilhelm Tell says hi, but even he didn't shoot from the hip). [The first time I ever tried point shooting (not using sights) I was able to consistantly hit a paper plate at about 30 feet with my pistol. There is a scientific and thoroughly tested technique as to how to hit with a handgun without using sights; a technique used extensively by American law enforcement officers. As for Harry taking stupid risks such as shooting at suspects hiding behind innocents, take a look at the rest of the film and it's four sequels where he uses an overpenetrative weapon in a crowded urban center countless times, crashes a car through a building to kill a liquor store robber (whom, by the way, is holding hostages), kills his boss with an improvised time bomb, beats information out of a priest in the middle of a church... well, perhaps I'm making this longer than it ought to be but the point is that Dirty Harry is a guy who would swat a fly with an anvil in a glass house if he thought that the fly needed swatting with no thoughts about the obvious consequenses, no matter how serious.]
When Harry stabs Scorpio in the thigh, Scorpio pulls it out with ease. It should be much harder to pull out a knife that is lodged in your thigh. [Scorpio is insane. Insane people have been known to show great strength and do dumb things like punch brick walls or pull out deeply imbedded knives.]
Dirty Harry carries a .44 Magnum, but he uses .44 Special ammunition, which is quite a bit less powerful than the .44 magnum. [He explains his reasoning in "Magnum Force" - .44 special ammo, although less powerful, produces less recoil when fired, enabling the gun to be kept level for a quicker and more accurate follow up shot instead of winding up with the barrel facing skyward after each powerful .44 mag. round is fired.]
When Harry confronts the bank robber and clicks the empty chamber as if 6 shots had been fired, in truth he had fired only 5. [Harry had in fact fired six times: five times on-screen, and once off-screen. The sound of Harry's gun is distinctive enough for the off-screen shot to be recognisably his.]
You may also like: Magnum Force | The Good, the Bad and the Ugly | Casablanca | A Fistful of Dollars | The Abominable Dr. Phibes
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