Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.
Time for another installment in my cross-franchise comparison between Stallone’s manliest series and Eastwood’s only real franchise. It’s been a few days since the last one of these went up, but I’ve been watching the movies as double-features, and really enjoying my reintroduction to each of them. This was the double-feature I was looking forward to the least out of the entire series, and the two films out of the series that I have seen the fewest times, but once I finally sat through them both again, I was interested to see what they each do with their central characters.
First thought on THE ENFORCER: great ass. Way to rock those Daisy Dukes, Jocelyn Jones.
Between this movie and THE GREAT TEXAS DYNAMITE CHASE, I’m guessing she sold a whoooole lotta denim back in the ‘70s. These days, anyone can buy hot. ‘70s hot, though... that’s real hot. In general, it’s a promising opening scene. Scorpio was a great villain in the first one, and the guy in the opening sequence here looks like a good psycho at first. By this point, the DIRTY HARRY films were just bigger-budget TV episodes, and as long as that’s all you expect of it, it’s solid stuff.
One of the reasons this one isn’t a total washout is because of the dialogue. They turned up the funny for Dirty Harry in this one, and as a result, it might be the most quotable of the films overall, even if things like “Make my day” and “Do you feel lucky, punk?” are better known as individual lines. Like I love it when Harry’s boss busts him down to personnel, and Harry stares at him like he’s insane.
“Personnel? That’s for assholes.”
“I was in personnel. For ten years.”
“... yeah, well...”
This is the moment where Harry’s anti-authoritarian streak really turned into a sitcom joke, and as a result, this film stands alone in the series. It’s nothing like either MAGNUM FORCE or SUDDEN IMPACT in tone. This is the most deliberately fun, and the bad guys aren’t that bad, all things considered.
In fact, it’s hard to figure out what their overall plan is. They’re radical militants, but they don’t really have any philosophy they state or any specific mission. Instead, they’re mainly just trying to steal weapons and cause some chaos. The warehouse robbery where they steal a bunch of weaponry is one of the film’s best sequences. One thing that helps is Jim Fargo, the film’s director, has a decent eye for scope, so he manages to use it better than Ted Post, who damn near kills MAGNUM FORCE with his indifferent visual style. Fargo was a second-unit director who had worked with Eastwood repeatedly on films like OUTLAW JOSEY WALES and EIGER SANCTION and HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER and BREEZY, and THE ENFORCER was his debut as director. He also made EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE with Eastwood, and it’s obvious that he likes to play up the looser comedic side of Eastwood’s persona. The entire premise of the film, written by Stirling Silliphant and Dean Reisner, is one designed to milk laughs from the character’s mounting frustration. And what’s he frustrated about the most in this film?
In order to answer that, let me pose another question: was there a time when Tyne Daley was actually considered hot?
Because of the whole “wimmen folks can’t be cops” storyline that is the backbone of this film, this one’s more dated than the first two films. You do have to respect a line like “If she wants to play lumberjack, she’s gonna have to learn to handle her end of the log,” but overall, I’m amazed that the ‘70s were still wrestling with this as a dramatic issue. I guess I forget sometimes how radically ideas on gender roles have shifted even over the course of my lifetime. Daley’s fine in her role, but it’s one joke over and over. She gets the job to fill a quota, and repeatedly, Harry has to help her keep up. One of my favorite scenes is when Harry goes to question a black militant leader to try and get a lead, and they have to wade through the guy’s followers first. When the guy agrees to only talk to Harry, he leaves Tyne Daley to fend for herself with a wry “That’s mighty white of you” as he walks away.
By the second half of the film, the one-liners are coming fast and furious, like when Harry’s captain demands that he turn in his badge.
“Here’s a seven-point suppository, Captain,” he snarls as he hands the badge over.
“What did you say?”
“I said stick it in your ass.”
The transfer’s gorgeous, a lovely reproduction of the actual look of film, and not one of these transfers where they’ve pushed it too far to look more digital than anything. That’s a problem we’re starting to see more and more, and I think it’s going to be the defining issue of this first generation of high-def titles.
It’s kind of a crummy ending, all things considered, a fizzle when the film needs to build to something genuinely thrilling. It does raise the question, though: is Clint Eastwood is the only person to ever break out of Alcatraz in one film and into Alcatraz in another?
I’ll leave you with my favorite line from the film, and one I look forward to incorporating into a conversation the first time it’s appropriate:
“Can I make a statement, McKay?”
“Go ahead.”
“Your mouthwash ain’t makin’ it.”
I find myself wrestling with contradictory thoughts at the start of RAMBO III. Yes, there’s Kurtwood Smith, so you have to hope you’re going to get some prime douchebag, but at the same time, check out Rambo’s hair. That’s about as sure a sign as you could ask for that the film’s going to be crippled by ‘80s excess. In the meantime, can someone do me a favor and edit RAMBO III and CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR together into one big pile of politically naïve bullshit? In the last article in this series, I talked about how perfect a reason FIRST BLOOD 2 has for existing. It answers a deep need in the character, something the first film couldn’t do by design. Even if you don’t like the second film, you have to admit... it’s completely justified. The notion of going back to win Vietnam, even if it’s just a small-scale symbolic win, was enormously potent when that film was made.
Obviously Stallone wanted to make something else with that same sort of relevance to the moment. The problem is that this film ties itself in knots trying to justify sending Rambo back into an active war zone, but it’s all just silly blah blah blah, lots of textbook “characterization” for people who die six minutes later. There’s a lot of talk about how Afghanistan is “Russia’s Vietnam,” and the most interesting thing about the film is how palpable the desperation is. “SEE?! SEE?! THEY HAD A VIETNAM, TOO! IT’S NOT JUST US!” They hammer the message so hard that it’s almost like a paid ad by the Reagan administration.
And, yes, it’s pretty hard to avoid the inherent humor in watching Rambo basically arm and train the Taliban. Thanks, douche. Way to go.
The film’s only 1:41, but it crawls like four hours go by. I was restless by the halfway point, and the film never seems to get moving at all. The action sequences aren’t badly staged... Peter MacDonald is still a pretty major second-unit guy on films like the BOURNE series and several of the HARRY POTTER films. He’s been in the business since the ‘50s, and he did some of everything over the years. I don’t think he ever demonstrated a knack as a director, though, and the awkward overall construction of every single dramatic beat is a testament to just how badly he bungled things.
It’s really no contest here, since RAMBO III is nearly impossible to sit through, but just to make it official...
DECISION: THE ENFORCER
Now let’s see if I can finish my looks at the new films from Werner Herzog, Peter Berg, and Timur Bekmambetov before I have to leave to catch my flight...
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
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