Warner Bros. has released three Clint Eastwood films in 4K Ultra HD and Digital: Pale Rider, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and Dirty Harry. Regularly included in the top third of Eastwood’s films, the westerns represent his acting and directing, while Dirty Harry showcases a more modern Eastwood that would later be channeled in other films like Gran Turino or In the Line of Fire. Regardless of what rank you’d give these three films, they’re definitely representative of the kinds of antihero action that Eastwood is known for.
From 1971, Dirty Harry launched Eastwood as an “action hero,” spawning four sequels over the next seventeen years: Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and The Dead Pool (1988). As San Francisco Inspector Harry Callahan, Eastwood lays out criminals left and right, in pursuit of a mysterious serial killer who is holding the city captive through fear. With echoes of the Zodiac killer, the film directed by Don Siegel (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Escape From Alcatraz) ratchets up the suspense, but still leaves room for Eastwood’s dry humor including this witty monologue: “I know what you’re thinking: ‘Did he fire six shots or only five?’ Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do you, punk?” Fans of the Dirty Harry films will appreciate catching the original in 4K Ultra HD, and film aficionados collecting a backlog of Eastwood flicks will find a classic example of 1970s action lore. Special features here include the new featurettes, “Generations and Dirty Harry” and “Lensing Justice: The Cinematography of Dirty Harry.”
Five years later, Eastwood delivered The Outlaw Josey Wales as the director and star of the action. After watching his wife and child murdered by pro-Union soldiers led by Captain Terrill in Missouri, Wales joins the Confederacy only to lose the war. When his Confederate bushwhackers are murdered in cold blood by Terrill’s men, Wales goes on the run, collecting a ragtag crew of other castoffs including an old Cherokee man and a young Navajo squaw. When Terrill’s crew catches up to Wales, it’ll take all of the relationships he’s built over time to save him from the evil fury of the former Union soldiers. Throughout the film, the descent of Wales into inhumanity and madness, and his subsequent return to humanity, provide the arc of Wales’ development even as he leads the Union evildoers on a race for freedom. The film also stars Chief Dan George and Sondra Locke (Eastwood’s one-time romantic partner). Special featurettes here are “An Outlaw and an Antihero” and “The Cinematography of and Outlaw: Crafting Josey Wales.”
In the next decade, 1985’s Pale Rider saw Eastwood serving double time again as director and star. A mining company has been working to extricate a group of stubborn miners from an area that they believe is going to be highly successful. A young girl prays that God would send the miners help to protect them, and an unnamed stranger rides into town. Soon known as “Preacher,” the ghostly out-of-towner begins to set things right, and inspire the mild mannered miners to fight back against the corruption. Michael Moriarty, Richard Kiel, and John Russell all make appearances. New features here are “The Diary of Sydney Penny: Lessons from the Set” and “Painting the Preacher: Bruce Surtees and Pale Rider.”
From a westerns perspective, The Outlaw Josey Wales and Pale Rider rank higher than any of his other westerns for me, with the exception of Unforgiven. Honestly, Silverado and High Plains Drifter (another Eastwood film) round out my top five westerns of all time. It’s incredible how many of them involve Eastwood, and how closely his personality aligns with that of the mystique around the wild, wild West. Eastwood’s characters have similar mindsets, and his view of westerns definitively inhabits his other roles.
That leaves me with one last word about Dirty Harry. If Joe Friday of Dragnet is the ultimate on-screen cop, then Dirty Harry Callahan has to be on the Mount Rushmore of cinematic law enforcement officers. There are other Dirty Harry films worth watching, as even with the overall pattern involving Harry vs his bosses vs the bad guys, the franchise mixes it up enough to give each their own style. Regardless of whether you want your western with horses, or with high speed chasing law enforcement vehicles, Eastwood’s three hits will entertain you and scratch that good versus evil itch.
