Dirty Harry - Influence

Influence

Eastwood's iconic portrayal of the blunt, cynical, unorthodox detective who is seemingly in perpetual trouble with his incompetent bosses, set the style for a number of his later roles and, indeed, a whole genre of "loose-cannon" cop films. The film resonated with an American public that had become weary and frustrated with the increasing violent urban crime that was characteristic of the time. The film was released at a time when throughout 1970 and 1971 there were prevalent reports of local and federal police committing atrocities and overstepping their authority by entrapment and obstruction of justice. Author McGilligan, argued that America needed a hero, a winner at a time when the authorities were losing the battle against crime. The box-office success of Dirty Harry led to the production of four sequels.

The motif of a cop who cares more for justice than rules was one subsequently imitated by a number of other films. John Wayne, who like Eastwood was associated with the Western genre, starred in McQ and later Brannigan. Sylvester Stallone's Cobra and Judge Dredd shares many elements with Dirty Harry, a cop with an obsession for justice, a law system that is more concerned about the criminal than the victim, and a psychotic killer. The film is also an adaption of the novel Fair Game and was originally intended by Stallone to be the basis of Beverly Hills Cop while he was involved with the project. Stallone's own movie was plagiarised by Italian film producers for the Fred Williamson Blaxploitation film Black Cobra, which also mimicked the famous 'Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?' scene from Dirty Harry. The same scene was parodied in The Mask.

Writers Shane Black and Steven E. de Souza have spoken of the film's influence on their characters of Martin Riggs and John McClane from the Lethal Weapon and Die Hard franchises.

The film can also be counted as the seminal influence on the Italian tough-cop films, Poliziotteschi, which dominated the 1970s and that were critically praised in Europe and the U.S. as well.

Dirty Harry helped popularize the Smith & Wesson Model 29 revolver, chambered for the powerful .44 Magnum cartridge. The film initiated an increase in sales of the powerful handgun, which continues to be popular forty years after the film's release. The .44 Magnum ranked second in a 2008 20th Century Fox poll of the most popular film weapons, after only the lightsaber of Star Wars fame. The poll surveyed approximately two thousand film fans. However, the only appearances of the Model 29 in the movie are in the close-ups: Any time Eastwood actually fired the revolver, he was shooting a Smith & Wesson Model 25 in .45 Long Colt. In 1971, .44 Magnum blanks were not available. However, as a result of decades of Hollywood Western movies there was an ample supply of 5-in-1 blank cartridges. As the Model 25 is built on the same Smith & Wesson N frame as the Model 29, it was simple to substitute it for the Model 29 in scenes where Eastwood had to shoot the revolver.

The .44 Magnum used in the film is now owned by Prop Master and weapons specialist Bill Davis, who bought it from the production company before the film became popular. The revolver is still in use as part of his catalog. Director John Milius owns one of the actual Model 29s used in principal photography in Dirty Harry and Magnum Force. It is (as of March 2012) on loan to the National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Virginia and is on display in the Hollywood Guns gallery.