Its star’s growling charisma demands to be enjoyed.

| Aug 22, 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

Clint Eastwood, in the title role, is a superhero whose antics become almost satire. Strip away the philosophical garbage and all that's left is a well-made but shallow running-and-jumping meller.

| Mar 1, 2007

A crisp, beautifully paced film, full of Siegel's wonderful coups of cutting and framing.

| Mar 1, 2007

No less than Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it offers a fabulous, multifarious political metaphor. (And, as with Body Snatchers, Siegel's own liberal interpretation was trumped by a more forceful hard-right reading.

Full Review | Apr 4, 2006

Seminal law-and-order cinema.

| Jan 26, 2006

If there aren't mentalities like Dirty Harry's at loose in the land, then the movie is irrelevant. If there are, we should not blame the bearer of the bad news.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 23, 2004

What makes Dirty Harry worth watching no matter how dumb the story, is Siegel's superb sense of the city, not as a place of moods but as a theater for action.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 21, 2003