Dirty Harry Dirty Harry Dirty Harry is a 1971 American action crime thriller film produced and directed by Don Siegel, the first in the "Dirty Harry" series. Clint Eastwood plays the title role, in his first outing as San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan. The film drew upon the actual case of the Zodiac Killer as the Callahan character seeks out a similar vicious psychopath. "Dirty Harry" was a critical and commercial success and set the style for a whole genre of police films. It was followed by four sequels: "Magnum Force" in 1973, "The Enforcer" in 1976, "Sudden
Dirty Harry (film series) on whenever the need arose". Manohla Dargis compared Eastwood's presence on film to "Dirty Harry" and the" Man with No Name", stating, "Dirty Harry is back, in a way, in "Gran Torino", not as a character but as a ghostly presence. He hovers in the film, in its themes and high-caliber imagery, and of course, most obviously in Mr. Eastwood’s face. It is a monumental face now, so puckered and pleated that it no longer looks merely weathered, as it has for decades, but seems closer to petrified wood." Tania Modleski, author of "Clint Eastwood and Male Weepies", said, "[f]or