DIRTY HARRY (1971)

"...you've gotta ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?"

This early pioneer of the gritty, lone wolf, tough guy cop genre still holds up pretty good today.  San Francisco cop Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) is on the trail of of a serial killer who calls himself "Scorpio" (played creepy and deranged as hell by Andy Robinson).  Scorpio's been going around killing random people and even boasting about it in messages to the cops.  But after an encounter with Callahan things get personal between Scorpio and Dirty Harry.  During all of this, Callahan still has to deal with random hoodlums causing a ruckus around town and his unhappy superiors who just can't handle his special brand of justice.

Awesome musical score, great views of San Francisco, tons of 70's cars and fashions, naked chick, good pace, PLAY MISTY FOR ME playing at a local theater, tons of shooting where hardly anybody ever hits what they're aiming at, macho speeches about guns, good supporting cast.  Not as gritty or violent as I had hoped, but still worth checking out.

Part 2 - Magnum Force (1973)
Part 3 - The Enforcer (1976)
Part 4 - Sudden Impact (1983)
Part 5 - The Dead Pool (1988)

CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER (1994)

The President gets all pissed off when a friend of his, who just happened to skim $650 million off of some dealings he had with a South American drug cartel, is murdered by that same drug cartel.  The President gives his henchmen permission to take out the drug cartel.  Secretly, of course.  At the same time, Jack Ryan (Ford) is appointed Deputy Director of the CIA.  He has no idea about the black-ops stuff happening in South America.  When he discovers what's going on, he heads down to SA himself to rescue the men that were left behind.  Of course there's tons of other shit is going on, but you'll just have to see for yourself.  It's all very exciting.

Much more violence than the first two Jack Ryan films, grander scale and story, 141 minute runtime that flies by, explosions, helicopters, small appearance by Hope Lange, jets, Hollywood-style computer hacking, James Earl Jones, snipers, solid acting, a gigantic computer monitor, enjoyable bad guys.  I really enjoyed CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, but I was disappointed in the lack of screen time for Archer, Birch and the complete absence of J. E. Freeman.  Good 90's thriller.

Part 1 -The Hunt for Red October (1990)
Part 2 - Patriot Games (1992)
Reboot 1 - The Sum of All Fears (2002)
Reboot 2 - Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)