By Geno McGahee
“You’re shit out of luck.” – Dirty Harry (Clint Eastwood)
Clint Eastwood is an American treasure. His contributions to cinema will be forever remembered and he has paved the way for many other action stars to come along and take over where he left off…Liam Neeson being one of them. Remarkably, both Eastwood and Neeson of TAKEN fame star in the fourth entry in the DIRTY HARRY series, known as “THE DEAD POOL.” This film has a lot of remarkable things going on. For instance, we see Jim Carrey in an early role, playing the heavy metal rocker, Johnny Squares, and lip-syncing the Guns N’ Roses song “Welcome to the Jungle.” This was before they made it to the big time and before Carrey took over Hollywood. Back then, it didn’t seem that strange. Now, it’s very odd.
THE DEAD POOL was the final installment of this series and a movie that Eastwood does not think highly of. It followed the 1983 film “SUDDEN IMPACT”, and is just what you would expect from an action film from 1988. We have heavy metal, horror elements, and an Asian cop that does martial arts. It strayed from the DIRTY HARRY formula to mix in the things that were popular at the time and that is probably why Clint said he made “one too many,” but this film is not bad. The biggest problem with this movie is the fact that we have Liam Neeson and Clint Eastwood on the screen at the same time and they are not facing off in a battle of badass action stars. Neeson wasn’t really considered to be much more than a supporting character at this point in his career, but his recent action run proves that he is the goods. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It’s not too late to make one more DIRTY HARRY, crossing it over with TAKEN.
Peter Swan (Neeson) is a horror filmmaker, producing his next big hit “HOTEL SATAN” with rock god, Johnny Squares (Carrey) doing a music video for some cross promotion. Squares is a junkie and cannot perform and Swan is your typical jerk director as he refers to everyone that works for him as “incompetent morons.” It’s rather amusing to see this and to especially see Neeson talk to everyone in this manner. Neeson made the most of this role and is very amusing.
When Squares needs some drugs, an unknown killer forces an overdose on him. The killer has some connection to HOTEL SATAN and has started a dead pool with several names including Squares and Harry Callahan (Eastwood). When Callahan investigates the death of Carrey he has a run in with sensationalistic reporter, Samantha Walker (Patricia Clarkson), and it ends with Harry breaking her cameraman’s camera and causing a scene. Callahan’s partner, Al Quan (Evan C. Kim), proves to be a distraction as he just says some stupid things and proves to be in the way. I understand why this character is in this film, but Dirty Harry doesn’t need a partner.
Quan and Callahan go for a walk and come across a Chinese restaurant being held up by thugs. Harry finds his way in and sits down, waiting for the right moment to say his piece and kill the bad guys. As one of the goons storms around, Callahan asks him if he wants his fortune and notes that he is “shit out of luck” and kills him. This is sort of like the DIRTY HARRY flick where Callahan returned a cup of coffee that had too much sugar and took out some thugs trying to rob the diner. Callahan will not allow an eatery to be robbed. Not on his watch.
The restaurant robbery gives us a display of Quan’s martial arts fighting skills and this sort of shit definitely does not belong in a DIRTY HARRY movie. I know this was the time when Steven Seagal, Jean Claude Van Damme and many other martial arts guys were making a lot of money on the big screen, but this character and his fighting abilities are really jammed into this movie and tends to take away from the flow of the film at every turn.
The “Dead Pool Killer” continues to strike and this leads to many more discussions between Swan and Callahan. Callahan, once again, gets the girl. He and Samantha Walker, once at odds, become an item and he has to save her when the killer kidnaps her. Thankfully, by this time, his partner is hurt and in the hospital recovering. This is rare for a Dirty Harry partner. They usually end up dead.
THE DEAD POOL is a strange entry in the DIRTY HARRY series. I think that the idea was to connect with a younger audience by adding the horror “whodunit” aspect and the heavy metal and martial arts, but it lost focus along the way. The scenes with Eastwood are great, as always, and seeing him and Neeson together on camera is awesome. The torch was passed from Eastwood to Neeson in the action genre, and seeing these two forces on the screen together, knowing what we know now, is awesome.
This film isn’t as bad as so many people contend. It’s not as good as the three that came before it, but it has its moments and still holds together as a DIRTY HARRY movie thanks in large part to Eastwood knowing his character. As a big fan of DIRTY HARRY, I still found great joy in watching Callahan deliver justice to the mobsters and other bad guys in this film. It’s worth a watch…if for nothing else, to see Carrey, Neeson and Eastwood together in the same film. I recommend it.
Rating: 7/10
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