Dirty Harry

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.

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.

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.

Director Don Siegel's classic sci-fi flick Invasion of the Body Snatchers was alternately read as both right-wing (anti-Commie) and left-wing (anti-McCarthyism), and he found his controversial police thriller experiencing the same sort of dichotomy.