Just perfect...

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I loved it when I saw it in the theater when I was thirteen. It had action and a little bit of nudity. Everything anyone would want in a movie. However, now I think it stinks. Clint has made very few clunkers. His batting average is probably as good as the Duke himself, John Wayne. That said, "The Enforcer" is one a dud. It has a silly story and weak bad guys. It's like an R rated movies for kids.

I tend to agree with other fans of the "Dirty Harry" films that "The Enforcer" is nowhere near as good as the previous two. The villains in this film aren't as interesting or as menacing and John Mitchum being written out was a disappointment to me. It was good to see Harry Guardino again as Lieutenant Bressler and Bradford Dillman is excellent as the Police Chief. He and Clint Eastwood have some good verbal sparring. Tyne Daly is a convincing, gutsy cop. Also, the humour is a bit better than I expected. There are some good action set pieces but the gritty edge from "Dirty Harry" and "Magnum Force" is sorely missed.

Back in the Eighties when I was still watching network TV, I used to catch Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless in 'Cagney and Lacey', their female detective team-up in which they cooperated in both their professional and personal lives. I couldn't help thinking back then that it was Daly's role in "The Enforcer" that recommended her for the part in the TV series. Even when watching the movie today, Daly as a cop doesn't quite click with me, but that's probably just a personal bias. Even so, it bothered me that she got wasted at the end of the story, as her chemistry with Clint Eastwood seemed to improve over the course of the picture.Maybe you had to live during the era, but it seemed that right after the kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1973, action movies of the time described militant gangs with names like The Peoples' Revolutionary Strike Force and it used to bug me no end. Another one was the International Liberation Army from the 1977 TV flick "The Night They Took Miss Beautiful". All these liberation armies and strike forces and they never accomplished a thing except grabbing headlines and making a nuisance of themselves. Oh well.Certainly Harry Callahan didn't start out being an equal opportunity partner and given the situations he found himself in, was as far removed from political correctness territory as circumstances allowed. His training scenarios for new recruits were priceless, and he never did get far with his cruelty to animals exercise with Mrs. Grey from the mayor's office. Kate Moore (Daly) had to summon all of her intestinal fortitude to get beyond Harry's prescription of getting married and having kids; fortunately small arms training stood her well in taking out Sister Wanda (Samantha Doane) at the activist priest's church.Hey, I don't know if this was intentional or not, but remember the beat down Harry gave to the guy at the whorehouse? He used the plunger method on a guy named Buchinski (Robert Hoy), and I had to wonder if that wasn't a subliminal tribute to another action star of the Seventies, Charles Bronson. Bronson's real last name was Buchinski, I thought that was kind of cool.Well you just knew one of those Laws rockets would have to come in handy to close out the story. Dirty Harry liked to do things his own way, and what better way then to go out with a big bang. And to think, creepy Bobby saw it coming and couldn't do a thing about it.

This is the second sequel to Dirty Harry, where Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) teams up with new partner Inspector Kate Moore (Tyne Daly) to go after a terrorist group who threatens to blow up San Francisco if their money demands aren't met. As with the previous films, the mystery begins immediately when the terrorist group shows their murderous intentions, proving that the bunch, especially the scumbag leader Bobby Maxwell (DeVeren Bookwalter), is a dangerous piece of work. Maxwell was so knife-happy, harming people mercilessly, that you would love to root against him and hope Callahan would bust him up really bad. In the middle of all the terrorist chaos, there are these random unrelated crimes foiled by Callahan, which showcases his strength and witty attitude as he deals with the city's worst of the worst. This let us see, once again, Callahan's unorthodox but pretty comical ways of dealing with these criminals and ridding the city of them. I thought, though, that despite the suspenseful plot element, the overall movie has fewer action and has less satisfying moments, ***spoiler ahead*** particularly how Callahan has to let the butt-kissing, politically connected Captain McKay throw the rulebook at him and how Callahan ultimately dealt with Maxwell - Callahan really needed to give him a taste of his own medicine after all the harm and damage he's done. ***spoiler ends*** The scenes with the clueless Mayor (John Crawford) and the dirty-mouth Mustapha (Albert Popwell) dragged the film. Clint Eastwood stayed true to his form as Callahan and had some good chemistry with Tyne Daly. But, overall, this is the least satisfying of all the Dirty Harry movies. Grade C