Magnum Force (1973) Reviews

• The greatest action sequel masterpiece of all time!

  ivo-cobra82015-12-10

  Magnum Force (1973) is the greatest action sequel of all time! Dirty Harry and Magnum Force are my two best favorite sequels of all time. It is one of my personal favorite movies. I always, always enjoy those two movies so much from Clint Eastwood, I grew up watching those two movie and they are the best action movies of all time! I just kept watching them. My second best favorite action flick of all time! The movie had a good edition - good actors in this and Clint was his usual bad ass self. Hal Holbrook is a great villain in this. The flick is proof sequels can be damn fine films and not redundant. It is my favorite entry's of the series and no doubt one of the greats action flicks of the 70's! Magnum Force has...everything. Immortal perfection personified. Hal Holbrook does a marvelous job as do the three rookies who later became famous on their own. Robert Urich and David Soul well-performed the berserk cops. I do believe that Harry "crosses the line," and obviously so do those berserk cops, but unlike them, he never kills innocent by-standers and women. Magnum Force is old school 70's action flick with 'acting' and 'actors...none CGI or special effects in it. It is not that I hate CGI or special effects ...it's just so nice to watch the way it was done. Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) goes up against rogue cops here and he never waivers on his 'justice'. Great pistol shooting scenes and very well done film. Eastwood rocks. I forgot to mention Dirty Harry series are more similar to Charles Bronson's Death wish series. In my opinion I enjoy Dirty Harry Series much better than any other action movies. So the film is set when a mysterious wave of killings sweeps the Mafia underworld, it's Inspector "Dirty Harry" Callahan who answers with Magnum Force. Despite a demotion by Lt. Neil Briggs for his questionable methods, Harry will stop at nothing to find the killers. A rouge traffic cops are killing criminals who have escaped from court, they killing them brutally and they don't care if they kill an innocent person or not. Those cops are different from Scorpio from previous movie and they are more vicious than psycho sniper Scorpio. A tough, hard-core and explosive action-thriller that gets the job done. It's sharply written and well-constructed action film that has lots of flavor. Clint Eastwood is in top form as Dirty Harry, showing that truly no cop series can stand next to his classic character or these films. Compared to the original, this was a much better movie: The main story and characters were more interesting, the writing was less uneven and the overall pacing was better. It was still quite dated but a lot easier to take than the original. And, once again, I enjoyed the "retro-ness" of it. Mr. Eastwood's unshakable cool-as he dismantles a bomb or refuses a local anesthetic for seven stitches. In the film, Harry is certainly not a dictator. The law is. The law decides who lives and who dies. Nor does Harry glorify the state; or in this case, the system. He hates the system--the liberal legal system that has made a mess of things and Harry's the janitor who must clean it up; which makes sense considering his name derives from always getting the dirty jobs. Well, somebody's got to do it. Ironically, he sometimes makes a mess of his own, but delivers efficient results in the end. In Magnum Force, there's some new enforcers in town, and they ride dark horses. If ever a fascistic label could be applied, it's on them. Magnum Force is a 1973 American action film and the second to feature Clint Eastwood as maverick cop Harry Callahan after the 1971 film Dirty Harry. Ted Post, who also directed Eastwood in the television series Rawhide and the feature film Hang 'Em High, directed the film, the second in the Dirty Harry series. I love this movie to death, it is my favorite best sequel of all time, Just like Terminator the first two movies, I love those two sequels to death! This movie deserves 10, it is almost so good as Dirty Harry, the only problem I have with the film is it 2 hrs. long, it could have been shorter. All the actors did a great job acting and the story was amazing. I have enjoy this movie to death and I always will! Throughout, there's a stress on dear old hubris: Harry earnestly repeats that "a man's got to know his limitations." Thus, it's reasoned that the killings he commits are justified - "There's nothing wrong with shooting, as long as the right people get shot" - but murderers do have to be discriminating. The action scenes are fabulous and the fantastic, the gun play is terrific, you will sea a lot of hand gun use and they are used well.

• Good Movie

  mrbrigante2005-01-02

  I sometimes wonder if "Magnum Force" is a better movie than "Dirty Harry." In the latter, Harry Calahan is up against a psycho causing panic, while in "Magnum Force" Harry opposes a number of enemies: enemies he would not have expected at first. Crime is still on the rise, there is too much corruption and too few 'real' cops, like him. When he meets some young, aspiring cops he is amazed by their qualities. Great acting by Clint Eastwood who is just perfect in playing the old-fashioned Harry Callahan. There is violence, but the strange thing is you support Callahan in 'cleaning' the city. One of the best in the Dirty Harry-series.

• Eastwood is the conventional tough-guy par excellence...

  Nazi_Fighter_David2005-02-11

  A racketeer, Carmine Ricca, has been cleared of murder, due to the usual and frustrating court technicality... He leaves, a happy and free man... Not for long... A motorcycle cop pulls his car over, seemingly for a traffic violation and ruthlessly slaughters him and the other three occupants... Harry is soon on the scene, this time with a new black partner, Early Smith (Felton Perry). It transpires that Harry is no longer in the homicide squad, he's been demoted to a stake-out squad by Detective Briggs (Hal Holbrook) because of his previous unconventional methods... Nevertheless he soon demonstrates that he has lost none of his considerable skills... Enjoying a hamburger at San Francisco Airport he becomes involved in a hijack... Harry meets an old colleague Charlie McCoy (Mitch Ryan) who seems unnaturally upset about the ineffectiveness of the courts and Harry fears that he may be the killer cop... Later, in the police firing range, he meets four young traffic cops who are more than impressed by his former lethal methods... With a wave of underworld killings on the increase, Harry is eventually told to work with Briggs to solve them... He still suspects the murderer is McCoy until the latter is killed and, by setting a clever trap to check the bullets in the guns of the four young motorcycle cops, Harry finds that they are the guilty persons... "Magnum .44" is much bloodier than "Dirty Harry." The lack of emotion emerges in Harry's character... He is a powerful and dominating figure who shoots first and asks questions later... Director Ted Post takes him from below to imprint his stature on the piece... Eastwood is solid enough but not as penetrating as it was in "Dirty Harry." He even have sex... Inevitably, as is usual with his persona, the initiative has to come from the female, unsuccessfully from McCoy's widow and extremely directly from the pretty little Japanese girl who lives downstairs... She gazes up at Eastwood and says: "What does a girl have to do to go to bed with you?" He replies: "Try knocking at the door." They've only known each other for about half a minute, making it one of the swiftest screen seductions on record, and it illustrates the fact that Eastwood's sex appeal is instant and uncomplicated... He is the conventional tough-guy par excellence – handsome, laconic, cynical, determined and independent; clearly a man to be idolized by other men and worshiped by women...

• Another Dirty Harry masterpiece

  chvylvr802003-09-03

  Magnum Force turns up the heat a little more than Dirty Harry. There is a little more gunplay and more of the sizzling 70's soundtrack that helped Dirty Harry be so groovy. Clint returns of course as Dirty Harry Callahan, this time after a small group of rogue cops. All the Dirty Harry movies are great and this is the 2nd best in the series, after Dirty Harry. The streets of San Francisco provides a beautiful backdrop, and Hal Halbrook does a great job of playing the continually annoyed chief. Bottom Line: Magnum Force meets the bar set by Dirty Harry and does a fabulous job of continuing the series.

• A sequel with a new story...

  MonteCarloMan2005-07-22

  This sequel to the entertaining "Dirty Harry" stands with few peers when it comes to successful follow-ups. Most don't stand on their own feet but Magnum Force does solidly. Changing the plot but not the style is good formula in movies, rather than playing out what was already done in the original, which is why so many sequels fail. "Magnum Force" is my second favorite film by Eastwood after "High Plains Drifter". Harry still likes to do things his way although rather than focusing his energy on the bad guys, he's focused on some crooked cops in his own department! Follows in the original's footsteps with lots of great views of San Francisco (My Birthplace!) I always feel at home when watching this movie. This is another film that is played a lot on TV because its so good on it's own. Felton Perry does a good job as Harry's partner, comparable to Reni Santoni in the original. Didn't like any of the sequels that followed this movie with the exception of Sudden Impact. Magnum Force is a film that rates highly as watchable again & again.