Harry’s Game
The Dead Pool
Directed by Buddy Van Horn
USA 1988
Warner Brothers
Blu Ray Zone B
Warning: Slight spoilers.
I first saw the movie The Dead Pool on its original cinema release in the UK in 1989, slightly behind the US theatrical release. I really liked the Dirty Harry films by this point but... I really hated this one... at the time. I thought the robot car bomb chase was stupid (while now, when we’re living in an age of killer drones... well, it just seems quaint) and I thought the background of the horror movie production setting was too theatrical and colourful... which admittedly it is but, I’m way more forgiving now, it would seem.
Revisiting the movie, well I actually really enjoyed it this time around and, although it’s still my least favourite of Clint Eastwood’s Inspector Dirty Harry Callahan movies, I think it’s not actually letting the spirit of the other movies down... it’s just how it seemed to me at the time of its release.
Following on from the most boring opening title credits of any of the movies in the franchise, we get a story where Callahan is actually being lionised by the press for what is seen as a heroic deed. Running with it, the San Fransisco Police Department, who are unused to having Callahan being received in a positive light, want Harry to cooperate with the press, this time in the form of lovely lady journalist Samantha Walker, played here by the great Patricia Clarkson. She has good chemistry with Eastwood in this and, I think this may be the first time I saw her in anything.
However, she picked a bad time to be associating with Harry Callahan because various killers of a jailed mob boss are after his blood and, on top of that, the latest case revolving around a horror film production, with a truly unlikeable incarnation of Liam Neeson as the young, luvvie director, involves a dead pool with Harry’s name on it.
For those unfamiliar with the concept of a dead pool, lots of places have them (or at least had them back in the day). You would basically bet on which celebrity would be the first to die and, after a number of years, if your one came up next, you would win the pool of cash for the bet. In this one, a killer close to the production of the film is mowing his way through the list in order to frame the director and it’s Callahan’s job to find him.
Once again we have a fast paced story with a number of action scenes and also some great police procedural stuff thrown into the mix... and Harry ‘gets the gal’ too, by the end of the movie (I was betting that both her and Harry’s new partner, played by Evan C. Kim, wouldn’t make it to the closing credits alive). It’s also got a less bold but still nicely put together score by the franchise’s regular composer Lalo Schifrin, with a few nice call backs to a couple of his themes from the first movie (reviewed here).
Oh, and one James Carrey... that’s Jim Carrey to you and I... plays one of the early victims, a rock star whose death is made to look like a drug overdose by the killer, who completely fails at that cover up too. Another thing worth noticing is that the movie critic who is stabbed to death by the killer is made up to look like legendary film critic Pauline Kael (who was quite critical of the first movie in the franchise).
And that’s all I’ve got on The Dead Pool, I think. It looks nice enough but the cinematography and set dressing makes it feel more dated and mired in the 1980s, unlike the other four which seem to be somewhat timeless. I thought it was fine though and I’m certainly more into it than I was as a 21 year old, that’s for sure. It’s as shame this was the final one but at least Callahan walks off at the end with Patricia Clarkson, so it’s nice to think that was a long and happy partnership for the characters in their fictional life beyond the screen. Not as much of a dud as I’d originally thought and Mr. Eastwood does a fine job with it.
