The Protagonists In Don Siegel's Dirty Harry '

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Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry (1971) shows a lot about the time that it was made. It isn’t like a classical movie where the protagonist is the moral good guy and the antagonist is a central bad guy. Instead, Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry serves as an anti-hero who has more than one antagonist and while he isn’t portrayed as someone you’d want to be best buddies with, you still root for him. I like this movie because though this is a noir, it tells a crime story that isn’t so black and white. To start off Dirty Harry isn’t portrayed as someone the audience should like or agree with. And unfortunately, Harry doesn’t like you either. In the movie it is stated that Harry doesn’t like anyone no matter what race, religion or gender. This sort of cold …show more content…

First, the audience naturally wants to be on the protagonist’s side. Harry is the main character thus the audience follows where he goes and gets invested in his goal. Another reason is that the antagonist is made to be un-relatable. Scorpio, the antagonist kidnaps and kills children, gets away with it, and demands money and his rights. Unappealing close ups of Scorpio and his manic bouts of whining and screaming really gives him an off-putting energy. This disdain for Scorpio in comparison to the immorality of Dirty Harry makes Harry seem like a good guy. And finally there is more than one antagonist. The police department or the law impedes Harry from getting Scorpio in jail. Once Harry finally collects Scorpio’s rifle, the evidence they needed to try Scorpio, the district attorney says they can’t use it in court because Scorpio has 4th amendment rights. In short Scorpio breaks laws, but law enforcement isn’t able to bring him to justice and thus since the only person who wants justice and is willing to do so by any means the audience turns to Harry. After Harry kills Scorpio his way (with a .44 Magnum), he throws his badge into the water. Explicitly this is a simple action, but on the implicit level Dirty Harry no longer does things through the law because the law was the only thing to stop him from getting to Scorpio

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