The Enforcer - Starring Clint Eastwood

Tough Cop Dirty Harry Returns for this Second Sequel

Oct 17, 2009

Inspector Harry Callahan battles a radical terrorist organisation with the help of his new partner Inspector Kate Moore (Tyne Daly) in The Enforcer.

Clint Eastwood returns as Dirty Harry, once again wielding his Magnum 44. and gunning down lawbreakers in San Francisco. This time Inspector Callahan finds himself battling a Hippy terrorist organisation intent on causing anarchy. Harry is also burdened with a new partner, an inexperienced female rookie (Tyne Daly) fast-tracked to the rank of Inspector.

Harry is still applying his inimitable brand of law enforcement to the streets of San Francisco. Law-breaking scumbags hold shoppers hostage in a convenience store. They demand the cops give them a car. Harry drives one through the window and shoots them all dead. Case solved.

Except the ungrateful owners send the San Francisco Police Department a bill for $14,000 dollars worth of damage and a couple of whiny hostages are considering lawsuits for injuries sustained during their rescue. Harry is sent to work in the Personnel Department by his pansy-wansy boss. Honestly, how is a cop with a huge gun supposed to get any work done?

Evil Lawbreaking Hippies on the Rampage

Callahan’s boss is forced to bring him back to Homicide when a group calling themselves The People’s Revolutionary Strike Force begin to terrorise the city. They steal a newly designed one-shot rocket launcher from a police depot, fatally injuring Harry’s ex-partner in the process. The PRSF are pretty vague about their intentions though they seem to be modelled on real-life factions operating in the mid-70’s.

The Enforcer is much more straight-forward than both Dirty Harry (Don Siegel 1971) and Magnum Force (Ted Post 1974). Harry was given a certain amount of ambiguity in the earlier films. This time there is no doubt he is the hero. San Francisco is the Wild West and Harry has the biggest gun in town.

Worse still is how the filmmakers botch the female partner angle, despite the fine performances of Eastwood and Daly. Too often they present Inspector Kate Moore as being a comic figure hopelessly out of her depth for police work, though the film like Harry, eventually grants her some respect as the film progresses.

The Enforcer does have some decent action sequences and remains entertaining despite its flaws. Director James Fargo orchestrates an exciting rooftop chase beginning outside a police station and ending in a church, via a detour through the set of a porn movie.

Occasionally there are moments in The Enforcer when the film seems like a spoof. Anybody who has ever seen the cult 80’s TV show Sledge Hammer (1986-88) with David Rasche as a lunatic cop with a big gun and a sports jacket may have a hard time taking The Enforcer seriously.

The copyright of the article The Enforcer - Starring Clint Eastwood in Action Films/Thrillers is owned by Kevin Sturton. Permission to republish The Enforcer - Starring Clint Eastwood in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.