Violence is very present in Eastwood’s work, and is never gratuitous, but more often than not guided by a concern for justice, however expedient.
This article was excerpted from Figaro Hors-Série “Clint Eastwood, the last of the giants”.
Le Figaro
“Go ahead, make my day! Go ahead, make my day!” the provocative invitation issued to a hoodlum by “Dirty Harry” Callahan in The Return of Dirty Harry (1983), instructing him to use his gun in order to give her the pleasure of shooting him, has long fixed the cliché of Clint Eastwood as a sadistic brute, enjoying the summary execution of the criminals he hunts down and, therefore, hardly less barbaric than they are. Never mind that he didn’t sign four of the series’ five installments, and that the role of expedient cop was first offered to other actors, including Steve McQueen and Paul Newman: sexist, reactionary, an advocate of immanent justice that doesn’t always bother with the courts, Dirty Harry, with his 44 Magnum, “giant phallus with a long barrel”. according to the papess of American progressive criticism…
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