Movie Review: The Enforcer (1976) directed by James Fargo
Two Pacific Gas & Electric employees violate company rules by picking up an attractive hitchhiker. Unfortunately for them, they’re not in a Seventies porno film, but a Seventies action film. Meanwhile, Inspector Harry “Dirty Harry” Callahan (Clint Eastwood) of the San Francisco Police Department is having a typical day. First he demonstrates why you don’t want to call the cops to deal with a heart attack victim (good thing the guy was faking), then he busts up a liquor store robbery where the crooks have taken hostages by busting up the store itself with his police car.
To be fair to Harry’s long-suffering supervisor Lt. Bressler (Harry Guardino) and new boss Captain McKay (Bradford Dillman), it’s a textbook example of “excessive force”, “reckless endangerment”, and “a plan that only worked because the scriptwriter is on Harry’s side.” So it’s not exactly a surprise when Inspector Callahan is temporarily reassigned to Personnel to take some heat off the department. But it’s telling that when Harry says, “Personnel is for assholes,” the captain’s response is not, “you catch on fast”, but “I spent ten years in Personnel,” which is an early warning sign that he’s a recipient of a Peter Principle promotion.
Harry’s assigned to the board for examining new inspector applicants, and is not well pleased to learn that the mayor’s office has imposed quotas for diversity hires. We only see one, Kate Moore (Tyne Daly), who up until now has spent her entire police career in Personnel. Inspector Callahan is astonishingly rude to her, which everyone takes as sexism but the audience can tell is really because she doesn’t have the street experience he feels is necessary for success as an inspector. Kate does get a moment to show that she has the legal stuff down once she’s actually allowed to respond.
Meanwhile, Callahan’s most recent partner, DiGeorgio (John Mitchum), spots the stolen PG&E truck at a weapons warehouse. He tries to emulate some of Harry’s cowboy cop police work, but gets himself murdered by the People’s Revolutionary Strike Force, and they get away with some serious hardware, including Light Assault Weapon rocket launchers. Before he dies, DiGeorgio gives Harry a clue, one of the criminals was a pimp they’d questioned in a previous case.
Bressler gets Inspector Callahan back on Homicide detail, but that comes with a catch, new partner Inspector Moore. Her lack of street smarts and tough hide shows why Harry’s right to be concerned about the affirmative action hiring process, but she is in fact competent and quick-witted, and she proves her worth by helping track down one of the Strike Force. He’s not talking, but has a history with militant groups.
Inspector Callahan goes to Mustapha (Robert Popwell) of the Black militant group Uhuru, who aren’t exactly law-abiding citizens, but don’t do violent revolution things because they know what happens to black folks who try that. He reveals that the former member in question defected to a more violent group led by Bobby Maxwell (DeVeren Bookwalter), former pimp and Vietnam veteran discharged via Section 8. Mustapha’s willing to provide more information in exchange for Harry doing something to help out a member of Uhuru who was busted on possession charges. But Captain McKay botches this by arresting all of Uhuru and blaming them for the PRSF’s crimes.
When Harry refuses to go along with a photo-op getting a commendation from the mayor (John Crawford) and embarrasses Captain McKay in front of that dignitary by stating how badly the arrests have damaged the investigation, McKay orders Inspector Callahan to turn in his badge. When the real killers kidnap the Mayor for ransom, what will the police do?
This was the third Dirty Harry movie, and meant to be the last, as can be spotted by the ending. It was repurposed from a stand-alone script titled “Moving Target”, which explains why for much of the film the terrorists and Inspector Callahan seem to be in two different movies.
Good: Very nice violence scenes–you did come for violence, I hope? Clint Eastwood and Tyne Daly act well together, and the script avoids any hints of romance. Mustapha gets some good lines in.
Less good: Some scenes seem padded for running time, and could have been trimmed up to allow more development for the PRSF. There’s clearly much more going on with the terrorists as to which ones actually have political beliefs and which are solely in it for the money that could have made this a tenser movie. Bobby Maxwell is the “crazed Vietnam veteran” stereotype used so much in the media at the time. The cinematography is not up to the first movie.
Political: As you might expect, the movie is very much on Dirty Harry’s side. Violently killing criminals is far more efficient than following rules or coming up with other ways to free hostages. “Bureaucratic” police officials just get in the way of “real” cops. While Inspector Moore turns out to be okay, affirmative action as a whole is a bad idea that can hold back more qualified candidates (and the movie elides why there might not be a greater number of “qualified” women or minorities.) Politicians are more interested in getting elected than in actually fighting crime.
Content note: Violence, some a bit gory. Nudity, sexual situations (at least two of the PRSF were sex workers for Bobby before he went into the revolution business.) Racism (Captain McKay just kind of assumes that the Black militants are violent), sexism (Inspector Moore gets some microaggressions, and then there’s Harry’s whole thing that looks like sexism if you don’t know him.) There’s a very uncomfortable scene where the male members of Uhuru play the “we’re not actually going to do anything to you we could get arrested for, but we sure are going to imply we could” game with Inspector Moore.
Overall: It’s a decent action movie, though the whole “hey, look, a female homicide detective” thing makes it very much a period piece. Parents of younger viewers may want to discuss some of the themes of the movie and how attitudes have changed since the 1970s.
