Magnum Force
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| Magnum Force | |
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 Magnum Force film poster by Bill Gold |
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| Directed by | Ted Post |
| Produced by | Robert Daley |
| Written by | Characters: Harry Julian Fink Rita M. Fink Story: John Milius Screenplay: John Milius Michael Cimino |
| Starring | Clint Eastwood Hal Holbrook Mitchell Ryan David Soul Felton Perry Robert Urich Tim Matheson |
| Music by | Lalo Schifrin |
| Cinematography | Frank Stanley |
| Editing by | Ferris Webster |
| Studio | The Malpaso Company |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | December 25, 1973 |
| Running time | 124 min |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Preceded by | Dirty Harry (1971) |
| Followed by | The Enforcer (1976) |
Magnum Force is the 1973 sequel to the 1971 film Dirty Harry, starring Clint Eastwood as maverick cop Harry Callahan. The film was released in 1973 and directed by Ted Post, who also directed Eastwood in TV's Rawhide and the feature film Hang 'Em High. The screenplay was written by John Milius (who provided an uncredited rewrite for the original film) and Michael Cimino. This film features early appearances by David Soul, Tim Matheson and Robert Urich as the primary antagonists, the vigilante traffic cops. It is also the longest Dirty Harry film, clocking in at 124 minutes.
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[edit] Plot
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This article's plot summary may be too long or overly detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (September 2009) |
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.
A motorcycle traffic cop murders drug kingpin Lou Guzman in his penthouse, but on the way out he encounters Charlie McCoy coming in, and kills him to eliminate a potential witness to the murder. Not knowing that Charlie has just been killed, Harry presents his suspicions regarding Charlie to Briggs, who then informs Harry of McCoy's death and that Davis was the first on the scene of the shooting.
Harry turns his suspicions towards the rookie cops. During a shooting competition with the four present, Harry intentionally loses the competition to Davis by shooting a police officer target. He borrows Davis' gun for another run through the targets and purposely misses one target, embedding the slug in a wall. That night, Harry returns to the range and retrieves the slug fired from Davis' gun. He checks ballistics and confirms that bullets from Davis’ gun match those found at the crime scene involving Guzman and Charlie McCoy.
Briggs insists that Palancio is behind the murders, and issues a warrant for his arrest. Harry requests two of the four rookies, Davis and Sweet, as his backup. Palancio and his gang are called shortly before the raid and told that they are about to be hit by men dressed as police officers. Sweet is shot by Palancio during the shoot-out. Palancio and his men are also killed.
Harry next encounters the three remaining renegade cops in the parking garage of his apartment. When they give Harry a proposal to join their organization, he responds, "I’m afraid you've misjudged me." On arriving home, Harry discovers a bomb in his mailbox, left by the vigilantes in case he refused their offer. He calls Briggs to warn his partner, but Early Smith does not get the call from Harry before opening his own mailbox and is killed by a second bomb.
Briggs arrives and asks Harry to drive his car while he looks the bomb (intended for Harry) over more closely. Once they are moving, Briggs draws his revolver and aims it at Callahan. Harry is forced to drop his .44 Magnum revolver in the back seat and dump his speed loaders out the window.
Briggs reveals that he was the person who started the vigilante cops' executions of the criminals who dodged trial and explains the cause of the vigilante cops. “You’re a good cop, Harry. But you’d rather stick with the system.” Harry’s response is that although he hates the system, he will stick with it until some rules come along that make some sense, and that McCoy did not deserve to die. Briggs ends the repartee with the statement, “You’re about to become extinct.”
Harry notices he is being followed by a motorcycle cop (Grimes), but Harry hits the side of a bus and distracts Briggs. Harry grabs Briggs by the neck and rams his head on the dashboard, knocking Briggs unconscious. Grimes draws his gun and starts shooting at Harry during a car chase. On the run at the docks, Harry hits a concrete post, causing the car door to fly open and ejecting Briggs from the car. Harry hits Grimes head-on with his car, killing him and heavily damaging the car. He abandons the car as the remaining two vigilantes arrive.
Unarmed, Harry runs aboard the hulk of an old aircraft carrier docked in a scrapyard and a cat-and-mouse game begins throughout the ship. Astrachan finds Harry first and tries to shoot him. Before Astrachan reloads his gun, Callahan surprises him and beats him to death. Harry realizes he has no time to reload Astrachan's gun before Davis comes along, so Callahan runs back to his motorcycle. Davis finds Astrachan, then hears someone trying to start Astrachan's motorcycle up top on the ship's deck. He races to the top to get on his motorcycle and chases Harry. They both make death-defying jumps across the upper decks of the ship until they run out of deck. Harry ditches his bike to stop quickly, and Davis ends up sending his motorcycle and himself straight into the bay. Davis’ dead body comes floating to the surface.
Harry returns to the car, but Briggs has regained consciousness. Harry surreptitiously activates the timer on the mail bomb and leaves it on the front seat as he backs away. Briggs gets in the car with a gun in his hand, declaring he will prosecute Callahan with his own system as a cop killer, and starts to drive away. A few seconds later, the bomb explodes, killing Briggs.
The final scene of the movie is a close-up of Harry's face as he lets out a slight smile and says, "Man's got to know his limitations", a phrase with which he taunted Briggs earlier, before he walks away from the scene.
[edit] Cast
- Insp. Harry Callahan: Clint Eastwood
- Lt. Neil Briggs: Hal Holbrook: Briggs is Callahan's superior officer. The unorthodox Callahan is the thorn in his side, and the two are constantly at each other's throats. In the climax of the film, he revels himself to be the main antagonist.
- Ofc. John Davis: David Soul
- Ofc. Philip Sweet: Tim Matheson
- Ofc. "Red" Astrachan: Kip Niven
- Ofc. Michael Grimes: Robert Urich
- Insp. Earlington "Early" Smith: Felton Perry
- Ofc. Charlie McCoy: Mitch Ryan
- Prostitute: Margaret Avery
- Cab Driver: Bob McClurg
- Insp. Frank DiGeorgio: John Mitchum
- J.J. Wilson: Albert Popwell
- Carol McCoy: Christine White
- Sunny: Adele Yoshioka
- Pool Girl: Suzanne Somers (uncredited)[1][2][3]
[edit] Controversy
The film received negative publicity in 1974 when it was discovered that a scene in which drain cleaner is used to murder a prostitute had allegedly inspired the infamous Hi-Fi Murders, with the two killers believing the method would be as efficient as it was portrayed in the film. However, the killers admitted that they had been looking for a unique murder method when they stumbled upon the film, and that had they not seen the movie, they'd have simply picked a method from another film. The drain cleaner reference was repeated in three other films, Lethal Weapon (1987), Heathers (1989) and Urban Legend (1998).
[edit] Box office performance
In the US, the film made a total of $44,680,473 (USA)[4], making it more successful than the first film.
[edit] References
- ^ "www.onlinemoviemagazine.com". http://www.onlinemoviemagazine.com/preview/listing/suzannesomers/index.html. Retrieved 2010-03-09.
- ^ "www.mania.com". http://www.mania.com/magnum-force-deluxe-edition_article_58754.html. Retrieved 2010-03-09.
- ^ "www.cinemorgue.com". http://www.cinemorgue.com/suzannesomers.html. Retrieved 2010-03-09.
- ^ Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070355/business. Retrieved 2009-04-12.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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