Dirty Harry

The movie that made Clint Eastwood an icon was the 1971 classic Dirty Harry (I still can't believe that Frank Sinatra was the first choice for this role). In the movie, Eastwood plays Detective Harry Callahan - a cop with a black and white sense of right and wrong and a flare for bending or breaking the rules to bring justice to what George W. might call "evil-doers".

In the movie a psychopath (played by Andrew Robinson who immediately became typecast as "that guy who played the psycho in the first Dirty Harry") had kidnapped a young girl and had buried her alive with only so much time left before she runs out of air. Dirty Harry wounds the psycho in the leg and when he finally catches up with him he steps on the wound to torture the psycho into revealing where he buried the girl.

Unfortunately - the information comes too late and the girl is already dead.

I think it safe to say that most guys (and most girls for all I know) rooted for Dirty Harry as he tortured the information out of the psycho. We cheered and Dirty Harry became an icon because he acted how we wanted our cops to act when faced with those situations - torture and all. Some people today would seem more concerned with the civil rights of the psycho instead of the LIFE of the girl he kidnapped (in the movie the psycho actually cries out the he "has rights" just before Callahan makes him scream in pain).

If Dirty Harry was real life and I was on a jury reviewing Detective Callahan's actions - the only thing I would find him guilty of was having a bad 70's haircut. All the rest would be just fine with me. If that makes me a bad person - then so be it..

Red Sox Magic Number - 71

Even though the Red Sox lost to the Rays last night because the Yankees also lost - the Red Sox magic number has been reduced to 71.

The Yankees also lost Thursday night which put the magic number at 72. I was going to write about how the Bruins (before this season) last won the Stanley Cup in 1972 or how when Carlton Fisk went to the White Sox he switched his number around from 27 to 72. Neither one of those ideas lit the fire enough to jot down a few words though.

But 71? That's a different story. 1971 was a big year if just for the fact that it was the year that the great Dirty Harry was released. The role that made Clint Eastwood a superstar. Many people know that Frank Sinatra famously passed on the lead role. Lesser known is the rumor that the role was actually written for John Wayne who supposedly passed because Dirty Harry was a little more morally ambiguous than the heroes Wayne was used to playing.

Having Eastwood play the role allowed a cultural torch to be passed. Sinatra and Wayne were the older generation. Eastwood was the new along with legends like DeNiro and Pacino who were also coming into their prime around 1971. But that was 40-years ago! In between we have had another generation of movie stars such as Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks and Denzel (to name a few). Who are the big stars today? Who is the torch to be passed to? I know others have made similar points but the truth is the talent cupboard or star power draw really seems to be bare these days.