The Denzel Washington movie that started life as a ‘Dirty Harry’ sequel: “Clint thought it was too grim”
Few franchises in Hollywood history have ever been able to escape the law of diminishing returns, and Clint Eastwood realistically had nowhere to go but down after Dirty Harry.
One of the greatest and most iconic movies in one of Hollywood’s greatest and most iconic careers, renegade cop Harry Callahan incited plenty of controversy on his way to becoming a cultural and cinematic icon; with the character proving so popular, Eastwood felt compelled to return.
The actor and filmmaker stuck with the role for the better part of two decades, reprising it in Magnum Force, Sudden Impact, The Enforcer, and The Dead Pool, none of which could hold a candle to the original. People kept writing scripts, though, and if they were good enough, Eastwood was happy to sign on.
Unfortunately, things didn’t work out that way for Fred Dekker, who penned a screenplay with the idea of watching his hero bring one of his most famous creations back to the big screen. It must have been disheartening to see his plans for another Dirty Harry go up in smoke, but at least he got to see his work realised with a different actor in the lead.
“I really like Dirty Harry and Magnum Force,” he told Roel Haanen. “I’m a huge Eastwood fan. He’s one of my favourite movie stars. I think that Dirty Harry character was lightning in a bottle because after the first two, the rest of the movies just weren’t up to suff. So, I thought I would write a spec script.”
And that’s exactly what he did; Dekker crafted a story about a deranged murderer being apprehended by a police officer, only for the killer to escape from prison several years later, having thought about nothing but revenge during his incarceration. It would have slid easily into the Dirty Harry template, only for an insurmountable obstacle to arise when Eastwood turned his nose up at it.
“My producer, Joel Silver, claims to have sent it to Clint, but that doesn’t make any sense,” Dekker mused. “Joel had his own production company. He could just make it himself, which he did. He said that Clint thought it was ‘too grim’ for him.”
With Eastwood out of the picture and Silver remaining onboard, it was back to the drawing board. Dekker refitted his script and made the protagonist decades younger, turning them into a rookie cop. Freshly-minted Academy Award winner Denzel Washington was drafted in to headline the cast opposite a scenery-chewing John Lithgow, and 1991’s Ricochet would go on to become one of the most important movies of the former’s career.
It was Washington’s first time leading an action flick, and it goes without saying he’s found massive success playing in that sandbox for the last 30 years and change, none of which may have happened had Eastwood not been put off by Dekker’s “grim” idea for another Dirty Harry adventure.
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