Dirty Harry (1971) on Netflix
R19711h 42mActionCrimeThriller
A sniper who calls himself Scorpio shoots a woman in a San Francisco rooftop pool, then demands money and threatens more killings. Inspector Harry Callahan takes the case.
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- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb7.7/10182,819 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
San Francisco is hunting a sniper who calls himself Scorpio after he kills a woman swimming in a rooftop pool. He leaves a note asking for $100,000 and threatening more attacks. Inspector Harry Callahan, known as Dirty Harry, works the case. The mayor decides to meet the demand while the search goes on, over Callahan's objections. During his lunch break Callahan breaks up a bank robbery, shoots two of the robbers, and covers a third with his .44 Magnum. He is then given a rookie partner, Chico Gonzalez, against his wishes. A police helicopter spots Scorpio scouting for victims, but he escapes. While the two ride the beat, a neighborhood watch gang mistakes Callahan for a peeping tom and attacks him, and Gonzalez comes to his aid.
Cast
- Lyn Edgingtonas Norma
Show all 20 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Dirty Harry (1971)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The role of Harry Callahan was offered to John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, Steve McQueen and Burt Lancaster, and George C. Scott said in 1980 that he had turned it down over the script's violence. Producer Jennings Lang, unable to cast anyone, sold the rights to ABC, which found the violence excessive for television.
- Robinson's Scorpio was so memorable that he was reported to have received several death threats after the film opened and had to get an unlisted telephone number, although in real life he is a pacifist who flinched every time he had to use a gun, so Siegel halted production briefly and sent him for training.
- Scorpio was loosely based on the real Zodiac Killer, an unidentified serial killer who had committed five murders in the San Francisco Bay Area a few years earlier, with elements taken from a real kidnapper who, like Scorpio, buried a young girl alive while demanding a ransom.
- The film allegedly inspired the Faraday School kidnapping: in October 1972, soon after it opened in Australia, two armed men, one of them coincidentally named Eastwood, took a teacher and six schoolchildren in Victoria and demanded a $1 million ransom. The children escaped and the kidnappers were jailed.
- Audie Murphy was considered for Scorpio but died in a plane crash before his decision on the offer could be made, and James Caan was under consideration while Kershner and Sinatra were still attached; the part finally went to a relatively unknown actor, Andy Robinson.
- The line "My, that's a big one", spoken by Scorpio when Callahan removes his gun, was an ad-lib by Robinson. The crew broke into laughter at the double entendre and the scene had to be reshot, but the line stayed in the film.
- Dirty Harry helped popularize the Smith & Wesson Model 29 revolver, chambered for the powerful .44 Magnum cartridge, and it set off an increase in sales of the handgun.
- At the 44th Academy Awards, feminists protested outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, holding up banners that displayed messages such as "Dirty Harry is a Rotten Pig".
