“Dirty Harry” arrived in 1971, it did so amid a flurry of controversy. To some, Clint Eastwood’s rogue cop Harry Callahan seemed to be a celebration of police brutality, and the film overall came across as an apologia for vaguely fascist ideals. That is, unless you just took it for the brilliant action crime thriller it was. If you liked your heroes problematic, brooding, and with a healthy disdain for the rules, Callahan was one of the best main characters in the history of cinema. Those that simply enjoyed the film on that level propelled it to success, leading to a sequel and three other Dirty Harry movies. It all started in 1973 with Callahan returning in “Magnum Force,” and it almost seemed as if the movie’s writers were hitting out at critics of Eastwood’s maverick inspector.
In “Magnum Force” the criminals are about as despicable as you can get, with Callahan hunting down a group of vigilante cops who’ve taken it upon themselves to violently murder criminals who slipped through the cracks of the justice system. But co-writers John Milius and Michael Cimino didn’t necessarily set out to make a point about criminals being worse than rule-breaking cops. In fact, Milius found the final cut of “Magnum Force” distasteful, claiming that entire scenes had been changed from how he’d written them and turned into much more graphic or bombastic versions of the originals. For example, the infamous drain cleaner scene, in which a sex worker dies after being forced to drink the toxic liquid, was initially supposed to be referenced but not shown, and when Milius saw the final cut and its depiction of the gruesome moment in all its R-rated glory, he was shocked.
But Milius wasn’t the only one who was unhappy with the final cut of “Magnum Force.” For the sequel, “Dirty Harry” director Don Siegel was replaced by Ted Post, who’d previously overseen “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” and “Go Tell the Spartans,” and had worked with Eastwood on 1968’s “Hang ‘Em High.” By the end of production on “Magnum Force,” however, Post was almost certain he’d never work with the veteran star again.
