If you want to put Clint Eastwood's age in perspective, when he released one of his more signature films and characters in 1971, he was already 41 years old.That'd make him 80 now.
Dirty Harry was a bit of a change of pace for Eastwood at the time. Through the late-1960s he'd done quite a number of his spaghetti westerns and some war movies. Then he gets the role of a badass in modern-day San Francisco. Not a departure for Eastwood in character, but a departure in content in a role that would almost define his career.
Two years later Al Pacino would star in Serpico and thus we have two dozen cop/crime shows every night on the TV.
What confuses me about the film is once several murders have been committed and the killer claims to be going after a priest, the police set up a priest as bait and keep one tall building open as a trap.
Well, the killer takes the trap and Harry and his partner are in an adjacent building waiting for the killer to make his move. Being in another building with no access, Harry's only option is to spy the killer and then try to stop him by shooting him.
The killer shows up, Harry shines the spotlight and takes a shot. The killer has an automatic, high-calibre machine gun. Harry has a shotgun.
I'm not expert on arms and guns, but if I were trying to shoot a guy hundreds of yards away I wouldn't use a shotgun. I'd have a high-powered rifle or semi-automatic machine gun. No way Harry was ever going to hit the guy. Of course, the killer runs and makes it out without getting caught. The priest dies.
1 comment:
You are correct that a shotgun would be ineffective from that distance. However, Harry is actually using a Winchester Model 70 chambered in .458 Winchester Magnum, which would prove to be very effective.
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