best movie i've ever seen.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

This is a more than competent follow up to Dirty Harry, where a group of rookie cops are taking out gangsters, pimps and other low lives in San Francisco. However, when Dirty Harry refuses to join them, they turn on him, planting a bomb in his mailbox and killing his partner. Also it seems they have an intrinsic dislike of the permissive society and take out a group of people at a pool party and have an ally in Harry's boss, Lt Briggs, played by Hal Holbrook, who captures Harry at gunpoint when he finds out he's not supporting the young vigilantes. In Harry's eyes, for all the system is rotten, vigilante law is not the answer and he has to uphold the law, where you'd expect him to support the police death squad.Magnum Force is good in other respects, the brutal shooting of a gangster who is acquitted for murder by one of the renegade cops is unexpected, the chase scene at the end where Harry dispenses of the vigilante cops on a disused aircraft carrier( including karate chopping one of them to death) is first rate, and Harry also stops an aircraft hijack. As ever, Lalo Schifrin provides a first class soundtrack and look out for David Soul in his first starring role as one of the renegade cops.Again there are some memorable quotes, most notably one where Harry's Japanese American neighbour asks him what she has to do to get into bed with him, " just knock at the door", is his quick response in one of the quickest seductions ever. Also as the film ends and Harry's boss is blown up by a car bomb planted by Harry, he states, " man's gotta know his limitations". Overall 9/10 in what is an excellent sequel to Dirty Harry.

The second "Dirty Harry" film, directed by Ted Post (a friend of star Clint Eastwood's from their days in television), is full of smash-ups, crash-ups, a pimp killing a prostitute with drain cleaner down her throat, a metal girder catching a crime czar right in the face, and a police inspector (Eastwood's partner) dispatched in a shameful manner--by opening a bobby-trapped mailbox! The plot is inverted from 1971's "Dirty Harry"--this time, the kids are all right and the cops are the bad guys. No matter; Eastwood's Harry Callahan dispatches with the legalities and mows down the crooked rookies just as he did with the hippie sniper from the predecessor. The screenwriters (John Milius and Michael Cimino!) don't even attempt to recognize the irony inherent in the scenario--it's just a plot gimmick to them, another way to go with this character. Still, for fans of completely mindless action fare, one could do worse than "Magnum Force". It has built-in audience approval, which is impossible to shake; one goes into the movie knowing exactly what to expect--and enjoying that all expectations are fully met. Post keeps it moving--thumping, thumping--like an erotic dance for would-be assassins. ** from ****

Magnum Force (1973) is the greatest action sequel of all time! Dirty Harry and Magnum Force are my two best favorite sequels of all time. It is one of my personal favorite movies. I always, always enjoy those two movies so much from Clint Eastwood, I grew up watching those two movie and they are the best action movies of all time! I just kept watching them. My second best favorite action flick of all time! The movie had a good edition - good actors in this and Clint was his usual bad ass self. Hal Holbrook is a great villain in this. The flick is proof sequels can be damn fine films and not redundant. It is my favorite entry's of the series and no doubt one of the greats action flicks of the 70's! Magnum Force has...everything. Immortal perfection personified. Hal Holbrook does a marvelous job as do the three rookies who later became famous on their own. Robert Urich and David Soul well-performed the berserk cops. I do believe that Harry "crosses the line," and obviously so do those berserk cops, but unlike them, he never kills innocent by-standers and women.Magnum Force is old school 70's action flick with 'acting' and 'actors...none CGI or special effects in it. It is not that I hate CGI or special effects ...it's just so nice to watch the way it was done. Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) goes up against rogue cops here and he never waivers on his 'justice'. Great pistol shooting scenes and very well done film. Eastwood rocks. I forgot to mention Dirty Harry series are more similar to Charles Bronson's Death wish series. In my opinion I enjoy Dirty Harry Series much better than any other action movies. So the film is set when a mysterious wave of killings sweeps the Mafia underworld, it's Inspector "Dirty Harry" Callahan who answers with Magnum Force. Despite a demotion by Lt. Neil Briggs for his questionable methods, Harry will stop at nothing to find the killers. A rouge traffic cops are killing criminals who have escaped from court, they killing them brutally and they don't care if they kill an innocent person or not. Those cops are different from Scorpio from previous movie and they are more vicious than psycho sniper Scorpio. A tough, hard-core and explosive action-thriller that gets the job done. It's sharply written and well-constructed action film that has lots of flavor. Clint Eastwood is in top form as Dirty Harry, showing that truly no cop series can stand next to his classic character or these films. Compared to the original, this was a much better movie: The main story and characters were more interesting, the writing was less uneven and the overall pacing was better. It was still quite dated but a lot easier to take than the original. And, once again, I enjoyed the "retro-ness" of it. Mr. Eastwood's unshakable cool-as he dismantles a bomb or refuses a local anesthetic for seven stitches. In the film, Harry is certainly not a dictator. The law is. The law decides who lives and who dies. Nor does Harry glorify the state; or in this case, the system. He hates the system--the liberal legal system that has made a mess of things and Harry's the janitor who must clean it up; which makes sense considering his name derives from always getting the dirty jobs. Well, somebody's got to do it. Ironically, he sometimes makes a mess of his own, but delivers efficient results in the end. In Magnum Force, there's some new enforcers in town, and they ride dark horses. If ever a fascistic label could be applied, it's on them. Magnum Force is a 1973 American action film and the second to feature Clint Eastwood as maverick cop Harry Callahan after the 1971 film Dirty Harry. Ted Post, who also directed Eastwood in the television series Rawhide and the feature film Hang 'Em High, directed the film, the second in the Dirty Harry series.I love this movie to death, it is my favorite best sequel of all time, Just like Terminator the first two movies, I love those two sequels to death! This movie deserves 10, it is almost so good as Dirty Harry, the only problem I have with the film is it 2 hrs. long, it could have been shorter. All the actors did a great job acting and the story was amazing. I have enjoy this movie to death and I always will! Throughout, there's a stress on dear old hubris: Harry earnestly repeats that "a man's got to know his limitations." Thus, it's reasoned that the killings he commits are justified - "There's nothing wrong with shooting, as long as the right people get shot" - but murderers do have to be discriminating. The action scenes are fabulous and the fantastic, the gun play is terrific, you will sea a lot of hand gun use and they are used well.

Unless you're Oliver Queen or the brooding anti-hero star of a comic book serial, don't expect the idea of Taking the Law Into Your Own Hands to work out after months of trying. Cops can get awfully irritable, and messing with the heat isn't a game worth playing — especially when you've got Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) hot on your trail. He's got a .44 Magnum Revolver, and he isn't afraid to play a tricky game of Russian Roulette with you if you don't quit it.The villain of this "Dirty Harry" sequel is not a deranged sniper but a vigilante posing as a traffic cop. He doesn't figure himself to be crazy; he finds his actions to be methodical. His favorite hobby involves hunting down the thugs who escape jail time and offing them — since the law can't manage to lock them up (the first few minutes of the film witness outrage following the release of a murderer, based on a technicality), why not do the dirty work and rid the city of the vermin that corrupts it? The foe figures he's doing San Francisco a favor, but Harry can see through the bullshit — the guy's a madman looking for an excuse to justify his madness; who knows how long it'll be before he starts shooting jaywalkers? So he and his partner (Felton Perry) try to strip away all the false leads and find out what the real deal is, as their Lieutenant (Hal Holbrook) remains skeptical of Harry's unconventional ways.Some find the "Dirty Harry" movies to be too questionable in their ethics to really enjoy, but I find their thunderous grittiness to be gigantically entertaining. Clint Eastwood is the ultimate anti-hero, his perpetual machismo convincingly charged. He's a man bred to seek justice, too old and worn to consider the confines of the rules. Harry is ruthless, stoic, street smart — Eastwood is so mesmerizing in the role because he doesn't have to emote. His lined face and subtle emotional scars speak louder than the limited stretches of dialogue he has to deliver."Magnum Force" is a such an excellent sequel because it builds on what made "Dirty Harry" made so great; we hardly need character development here, considering all we need to know is that Harry Callahan is a cop you don't want to mess with. The thrills are leaner and meaner, the screenplay without filler, the characterizations fiendishly simple — even the villain menaces more than the previous scoundrel, as his identity is kept secret until the unpredictable truth is let out. Things might not be as rugged as they were before — Ted Post, replacing Don Siegel, prefers an adventuresome tone in comparison to the first's sinister bloodlust — but "Magnum Force" is an appealing sequel that delivers the turbo-charged thrills one wants, one expects. But its quality — that's what makes it strong enough to work on its own.