…Dirty Harry was, and still is a powerful movie as a one-off…amidst the 70’s lens flare and urban machine-gun action, Harry is doing his best in a world gone mad, and that’s a tune that almost anyone can whistle, regardless of their politics...

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 19, 2024

In real life he would be up on charges, and justifiably so. In the movies he’s just the kind of cowboy these mean streets call for.

| Aug 19, 2023

Its star’s growling charisma demands to be enjoyed.

| Aug 22, 2022

Excellent thriller of the tough cop variety.

| May 31, 2022

Siegel shouldn't have had to shout so much to make himself heard, nor should Eastwood, otherwise excellent, be quite so determined to maintain a star's steely dignity. But a lot still manages to get through about violence and the loner's path.

| May 31, 2022

Dirty Harry is a film meant to wring the already well wrung and mangled conscience of the liberal. Which it succeeds in doing with engrossing efficiency.

| May 31, 2022

The message, finally, is the least important part of the film; the medium, and the artist's command of it, is the real message. And Siegel has never been more in command of it than here.

| May 26, 2022

Director Don Siegel's classic sci-fi flick Invasion of the Body Snatchers was alternately read as both right-wing (anti-Commie) and left-wing (anti-McCarthyism), and he found his controversial police thriller experiencing the same sort of dichotomy.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 16, 2021

...essentially the template for play-by-his-own-rules cop pictures...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 9, 2021

...a straw-man movie.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 2, 2021

He's one of the coolest unethical cops around, sporting a mean hand-cannon, an attitude of proportional size, and witty dialogue that consistently sizzles.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Aug 29, 2020

Beautifully-made propaganda for police brutality. Clint Eastwood is not as great as I expected, he does weirdly stilted line readings...

| Mar 26, 2020

The plot is neither new nor original. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Sep 24, 2019

A significant film ideologically, this right-wing revenge crimer catapulted Clint Eastwood to major stardom and launched a whole cycle of films about taking the law into your hands.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 16, 2011

"Dirty Harry" is still one of the most enjoyable films you could hope to sit down with for a couple of hours.

| Original Score: A | Oct 3, 2010

'70s rebel-cop classic is way too edgy for kids.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 14, 2010

Don Siegel's action thriller hasn't aged a single day since its release...

| Jul 6, 2010

An iconic performance by Clint Eastwood creates a cinematic immortal.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 20, 2010

Siegel makes excellent use of San Francisco locations, even if Harry makes a few implausible leaps across town from time to time. The Kezar Stadium showdown in particular is a keeper.

| Jul 3, 2009

The straw-man arguments made here skew towards caveman us-versus-them idiocy.

| Original Score: C- | Jun 19, 2009