The PlotThe Dead Pool begins with Det. Harry Callahan, aka “Dirty Harry” (Clint Eastwood), being attacked by men working for a mobster Harry put in prison. Harry survives. He is then assigned to investigate the death of rock singer Johnny Square (Jim Carrey). Harry learns that the director of Johnny’s music video, Peter Swan (Liam Neeson), had put Johnny’s name into a dead pool – a game in which each participant picks celebrities who they think will die and the winner is the person with the most dead celebrities by the end of the game. Swan’s list also included other celebrities who had recently been killed, and it included Harry’s name.
Where This Film Goes WrongIt’s hard not to like a Dirty Harry film. Not only does Eastwood have a great screen presence, and these films tend to be very well written, but Harry’s an iconic conservative hero. Indeed, Dirty Harry is an attack on the liberalism that infested the criminal justice system in the 1960s, which elevated the protection of the guilty above the protection of the public. Dirty Harry also slammed politicians who were more concerned with image than with actually protecting the public. This was a welcome message in an age when society seemed to be falling apart and when liberals kept telling us there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Sudden Impact is where things started to go wrong. This film really was just a revenge film. What’s worse, Harry was nothing more than a passenger in the revenge plot and his role in the film was just to bail out the vigilante.
Then along came The Dead Pool. In some ways, The Dead Pool was an attempt to go back to the original Dirty Harry formula of attacking some bit of leftism that was causing society problems. Unfortunately, the target they chose wasn’t really a good one, and the reason was that the things Dirty Harry attacked had all pretty much been removed from the criminal justice system by 1988. Indeed, by the time this film was made, many of the Supreme Court’s most egregious decisions from the 1960s had been overturned and obviously guilty criminals weren’t getting off on technicalities anymore. Moreover, police officers had come to be seen as heroes by most parts of society. Thus, nothing of which Harry complained in the past was an issue anymore.
Secondly, the main thrust of this film is Harry’s relationship with the media, which is where this film goes wrong. In the prior films, Harry criticized something directly related to his profession. He criticized a legal system that let obviously guilty people go free for meaningless procedural mistakes. He criticized people who suggested that the cops should act like death squads. He criticized politicians who didn’t care about how many people were hurt so long as their own careers were protected or their own ideologies could be implemented. These were things which really bothered people because these things flew in the face of common sense, they exploited the public for personal reasons, and they got people hurt. That made those films resonate with people.
This time, it’s different. The message here is that the media is evil for sensationalizing crime. But this is problematic. For one thing, these reporters aren’t nearly as bad as other reporters shown on film. Indeed, it’s hard to see these reporters as particularly bad at all. So essentially, the film criticizes the existence of the press, which is an awkward message at best. For another, this isn’t something which affects the public. In other words, it may stink for Harry or the people who draw the media’s interest, but it doesn’t hurt the rest of us, not like a system that turns killers free. Thus, it’s hard for the audience to sympathize or feel this film applies to them in any direct way. An attempt is made in the film to argue that it does matter to everyone by showing a man who tries to set himself on fire to get media attention, i.e. the media causes us problems by encouraging these people, but even that doesn’t really affect us as he would only end up killing himself.
And as a cop film, The Dead Pool is an ok. . . not great. It’s got a decent if unsurprising mystery (prior Dirty Harry films were not mysteries), it’s got some action here and there, and it’s competently shot, though it’s not a very beautiful or creative film. Unfortunately, Eastwood seems to be on autopilot in the role and Harry largely spends the movie walking around acting like a grumpy tough guy/caricature of himself. The film also succumbs to big-gun = small-penis syndrome when Harry uses a harpoon cannon to finish off the villain. I guess the .44 Magnum just wasn’t big enough anymore. Still, as cop films go, this one was ok. It probably wasn’t as good as The Presidio or Black Rain, and it certainly wasn’t Die Hard, but it was better than Red Heat.
But unfortunately, this wasn’t just a cop film, it was also a Dirty Harry film. And as a Dirty Harry film, this one is truly disappointing. It lacks the bite of the other films. It lacks the sense of right and wrong. It lacks the sense of us the common people versus them the nutty elites. In essence, this is a cop movie staring a Dirty Harry caricature, not a Dirty Harry film.