The Dead Pool (1988)

Directed by: Buddy Van Horn | 91 minutes | action, drama, thriller, crime | Actors: Clint Eastwood, Patricia Clarkson, Liam Neeson, Evan C. Kim, David Hunt, Michael Currie, Michael Goodwin, Darwin Gillet, Anthony Charnota, Christopher P. Beale, John Allen Vick, Jeff Richmond, Patrick Van Horn, Sigrid Wurschmidt, Jim Carrey, Deborah A. Bryan, Nicholas Love, Maureen McVerry, John X. Heart, Victoria Bastel, Kathleen Turco-Lyon, Michael Fagir, Ronnie Claire Edwards, Wallace Choy, Melodie Soe, Kristopher Logan

The final Dirty Harry may not be the best of the series, but it’s entertaining nonetheless, with a familiar Clint Eastwood as no-nonsense cop Harry Calahan, who, as usual, is back to short, blasting the villains unceremoniously. All in all, the movie shouldn’t work. The story is of the dime a dozen type, the atmosphere is like that of a typical eighties TV movie, there is hardly any tension and the action scenes are usually not very special or exciting. And yet the viewer will not be bored watching the fifth film about the adventures of Dirty Harry. Because Clint just stays Clint, aka cool. Whether he’s playing the Man Without a Name or Dirty Harry, Eastwood always manages to draw attention to himself with his charisma. Add to that some nice scenes and famous actors in their younger years, and you have a film that, despite the negatives, just looks good.

‘The Dead Pool’ has a less serious tone than the rest of the Dirty Harry series, which is perhaps fortunately, because the story is too cartoony, with characters too simply sketched, to make much drama or suspense out of it. can get. Of course Harry comes up with oversimplified one-liners like “You forgot your fortune cookie. It says… you’re shit out of luck.” and “Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one.”, but there are also comedic situations and other characters in the film that keep it interesting. Like a very young Jim Carrey who plays a drug-using rock star who does a hilarious Axl Rose impersonation for a horror movie. A horror film directed by Liam Neeson dressed in a leather jacket with a bad tail. Neeson’s acting isn’t particularly memorable, but it’s nice to see him in such a role and at such an early stage in his career. Carrey’s role is again very funny, but only for a short time.

The partner Harry is saddled with seems to fit the typical buddy movie signature due to his different ethnicity – he’s Chinese, but luckily the film doesn’t follow the beaten track in the sense that there are at first a lot of friction between the colleagues and they then become best buddies. Callahan’s Chinese colleague does live up to the cliché that every Chinese (in movies) is good at kung fu, but this aspect is actually only used once in the film. Furthermore, the partners are quite natural about their dealings with each other, although the characters or their relationship is little developed.

An amusing over-the-top scene is where Harry suddenly comes up with an unusual and oversized weapon to defeat his opponent. A strange moment in the film, admittedly, but funny nonetheless. And a scene that is as funny as it is original, spectacular and exciting takes place when Harry and his colleague are chased by a radio controlled car loaded with a bomb, over a long track with different types of roads and many hills. Again somewhat strange, perhaps, but compellingly filmed. It’s the scenes and aspects like this that keep ‘The Dead Pool’ above water and give it a face of its own, and ensure that the series doesn’t end ingloriously.