DIRTY HARRY (1971) **1/2 Clint Eastwood as a cop fluent in the art of situational ethics. Which is a damn good thing, if you think about it-the problem is cops who aren't and can instead ape only the hominid machismo that they mistake for heroism. We need people like the Eastwood character, and sad to say we're always going to. Naturally he ends up not only battling the psychopath (with a mutatated peace sign on his belt buckle), but also city hall, the Constitution, other cops, criminals on the periphery, and assorted aches and pains. The plot and execution are skewed to present imbalanced perspectives of the rights of the accused and police procedures, but both play to the strengths of film as a depictive art form: abnormal angles and the projection of what is not. So much power; scientific, moral, and teleological; lies in making the best rules possible and in knowing when to break them.
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