The movie Clint Eastwood called the opposite of ‘Dirty Harry’: “The other side of the coin”
Even though he made a point of trying to play different types of characters to avoid being permanently typecast, Clint Eastwood will always be remembered first and foremost for the ‘Man with No Name’ and ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan.
That’s not to say they’re the only memorable roles he’d played across a memorable career, but they’re definitely the two most iconic. He’s starred in dozens of movies, helmed 40 as a director, won four Academy Awards, and conquered the industry on two fronts, but there isn’t another protagonist or antihero he’s brought to life that’s been on a par with those two.
Yes, Unforgiven‘s William Munny, The Outlaw Josey Wales‘ title hero, and Gran Torino‘s Walt Kowalski are hardly cut-and-paste archetypes, but neither are they the poncho-wearing legend from Sergio Leone’s seminal Dollars trilogy or the bouffant-haired rogue cop who launched a thousand parodies.
When Eastwood first tried to break out of his Old West mould, he faced significant pushback. Play Misty with Me was met with raised eyebrows because he wanted to star in – and direct – a film where he played a regular guy, and he was warned that co-starring with an orangutan in Every Which Way but Loose had the potential to kill his career.
In the latter case, his unusual instincts were proven correct when it became the highest-grossing release in his filmography, a record it still holds for strictly on-camera efforts when adjusted for inflation. However, that wasn’t the film he called Dirty Harry‘s polar opposite, but Magnum Force… which was its direct sequel.
“Magnum Force is almost the other side of the coin,” he mused to the Golden Globes. “Harry is placed in a position of seeing this ultra-rightist organisation within the police force that may be assassinating people whom he feels aren’t any benefit to society anyway, but he sees the danger of where this all goes.”
To be fair, he does have a point. Whereas Dirty Harry follows the protagonist as he engages in a battle of wits with a deranged serial killer who needs to be stopped at all costs, Magnum Force turned its focus inwards to have Callahan bring down his fellow police officers for taking the law into their own hands, which subverts the formula of Don Siegel’s original, when he was doing the exact same thing to a degree.
Of course, it’s a flimsy defence to suggest that the one movie being called the opposite of Dirty Harry was the one where he reprised the role for the first time, but Eastwood isn’t wrong. Apart from the obvious fact that it’s a Dirty Harry movie by nature because he’s playing the same guy. Still, he’d know better than anyone else, even if Magnum Force didn’t quite shake the franchise to its foundations.
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