Magnum Force (1973)

Genres

Action, Crime, Mystery

Director

Ted Post

Country

USA

Cast

Clint Eastwood, Hal Holbrook, David Soul, Tim Matheson, Kip Niven, Robert Urich, Felton Perry, Mitchell Ryan, Margaret Avery, Bob McClurg, John Mitchum, Albert Popwell, Richard Devon, Christine White, Tony Giorgio, Maurice Argent

Storyline

As a mysterious vigilante kills criminals who have managed to avoid the punishment by the courts, San Francisco Police Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) begins to investigate.

Opinion

I had a pretty good time watching Dirty Harry and I was hoping it'd be the same with Magnum Force. No, I didn't enjoy it much. It wasn't much more than an average cop movie and it felt more like a parody than a sequel.

The storyline was interesting and it started off pretty good. There's suspense and it's pretty tight. But that lasted like 5 seconds since it's pretty obvious who's behind the murders, the twists aren't that smart nor impressive, and there are lots of useless and irrelevant subplots whose only purpose is to show what a badass Harry Callahan is and to glorify him. And the story eventually gets boring and unengaging.

The great thing about Dirty Harry was the character of Callahan. Magnum Force doesn't have that either. Callahan is still the main character, but he's becoming annoying because everything he does is overworked and overemphasises so like I said before, it looks like Eastwood is doing a parody of his character. The supporting characters manage to be even worse, especially Callahan's flat and pointless love interest.

That said, there's still something interesting and good about this film. The action. The action sequences are pretty exciting, and while they are not at Dirty Harry's level, they still manage to make up for the boring story and make the film a little more enjoyable.