Dirty Harry - Phillip Rock

 DIRTY HARRY - PHILLIP ROCK

There are two options, basically. One, to watch the film again to see if it still stacks up nowadays. Two, to read the novelization of the film and see how it pans out in relation to the film. One or the other? So I do both. I watch the film again and I read the novelization written by Phillip Rock, based on the screenplay of Dirty Harry featuring of course, Clint Eastwood. I'll never make a film critic so all I can say is yes, it's still a classic. As for the book, well it does exactly what it's meant to do.

Dirty Harry is pulp fiction essentially but with a definite 1970s slant when it comes to violence. The storyline moves along at full-throttle but then so it should. Descriptions of the weather and of the violence taking place are the only points at which the pace goes into a sort of slow motion but of the kind you would get in a Sam Peckinpah film when bodies are hit by bullets.

The film script is adhered to faithfully but then you would expect nothing less and the dialogue is duplicated almost exactly apart - bizarrely - from when the "Are you feeling lucky, punk?" line is spoken. In the book it's slightly different from the film and there's no obvious reason for it. The slight change in the line doesn't make it any less effective but it doesn't make it any better either.

Interestingly when reading the book, when it comes to Scorpio the psycho killer it's impossible to not visualize the actor Andrew Robinson who played him in the film, which just goes to show what such a good job he made of it. When it comes to the Detective Harry Callahan character however, you don't automatically visualize Clint Eastwood. The book doesn't really add anything to the character but it's very easy to imagine a host of other actors in the role from Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Warren Beatty or even Robert Mitchum.

Noticeably as well, there's a distinct lack of women in the story apart from when they're victims. There's also a lot of attention to detail when it comes to naming the streets and areas of San Francisco, which is fine but pretty meaningless to anyone who doesn't know the city at all.

There's nothing ultimately to gain from reading Dirty Harry though of course that could also be said about a lot of other books. It's an enjoyable read, however, which is also more that can be said about a whole lot of other books.

John Serpico