A movie that came out “fascist”? Tarantino strongly recommends this!

Considered “fascist” by some critics when it was released in 1971 (USA) and 1972 (France), Inspector Harry starring Clint Eastwood does not deserve that qualification according to Quentin Tarantino. The movie director recommends the movie!

As an introductory guide, Tarantino doesn’t deny that Harry Callahan’s character is a brutal cop who pulls a gun on his first crime and who sometimes prefers to kill a criminal rather than bring him to justice:

“Harry Callahan’s character is disturbing and disturbing”He entrusts the pages of his book Cinema speculation. “(…) The director has always put his audience in front of main characters who fascinate us, despite their disturbing nature and actions. Protagonists who are hard to support, but we end up rooting for.”

Tarantino then sets the film in its context of 1971, a time when serial killers are being hunted down by cops who lack any investigative techniques suited to this type of crime, which dates back to the late 60s and particularly the horrific Charles Manson case:

When you watch the film today, you can’t help but wonder, “Where’s the task force? Where is the FBI? (…) where are the profiles?’ Without the devices we now use to deal with this type of crime, Harry does nothing out of the blue.

Regarding the accusations of film critics at the time that the film was perceived as conveying “fascist” ideology, the director of Reservoir Dogs responds:

“Is there anything that Harry does in the movie that is categorically fascism? No. When he shoots the black bank robbers in the hot dog scene, they actually run out of the bank… armed with treasure and a shotgun.”

If Inspector Harry is not a racist film, nor the fascist film that critics of the time saw it as, it is a reactionary film. Aggressively reactionary (…), sometimes implicitly, sometimes clearly. Because the audience the film was trying to reach feared the shock of the future in a society whose rapid changes eluded them.

“Inspector Harry gave voice to their fears, told them they were right to feel what they felt, and gave them a .44 caliber hero ready to fight for them.”

This ruthless and reactionary role of Inspector Harry would allow Clint Eastwood to become a true star, finally being recognized as capable of playing something other than a gun and director Don Siegel making two very good films: Kill Charley Varrick!! and the last of the giants.

As for Harry, he experienced four new adventures, filmed between 1973 and 1988, all with Clint Eastwood in front of the camera with Ted Post, James Fargo, Buddy Van Horn and the actor himself, the unexpected impact – The Return of Inspector Harry (1983).