Two years after DIRTY HARRY commercially, critically, culturally & politically shook up the police procedural, Clint Eastwood returned (sans director Don Siegel) for MAGNUM FORCE, the second of five films as the iconoclastic San Fran Detective Inspector. And while he doesn't drop the ball (you still feel he’d shoot first/ask questions later), the John Milius/Michael Cimino script finds a way to place him to the political left of the main villains.* Director Ted Post, though largely confined to tv work, keeps a sense of big screen scale as Eastwood fights crime and bureaucracy (not necessarily in that order), but the story (‘fake’ cops are offing hard-to-convict bad guys) grows progressively obvious, even silly. A Milius trait. He also tries too hard to deliver another quotable tough guy line. (Not found till SUDDEN IMPACT/’83 with ‘Go ahead, make my day.’) Still, it’s probably the best of the DH sequels, though one of them (which one?) has a particularly dandy opening involving too much sugar in a cup of coffee. Just be sure to watch DIRTY HARRY first. And maybe go back rather than forward for your DOUBLE-BILL with Eastwood & Siegel starting their professional bromance in COOGAN’S BLUFF/’68.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Casting director Nessa Hyams (or someone) was on fire spotting future stars with three or this film’s four sharpshooting rookie cops going on to major careers: Robert Urich, Tim Matheson, David Soul. That’s a .750 batting average.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Eastwood must have liked Cimino’s take on the character as he kept him on to write & direct next year’s THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT/’74. A superb film that gave no indication of Cimino’s incipient self-destructive gigantism. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/08/thunderbolt-and-lightfoot-1974.html
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