On Dirty Harry’s release in December 1971, its eponymous anti-hero Harry Callaghan (Clint Eastwood), and the film itself, were labelled “fascist”. It’s an influential claim that’s been repeated down the years, and still has some currency. This accusation was not only erroneous, but the opposite of the truth: Dirty Harry is an anti-fascist, or at the very least anti-totalitarian, movie.
The notorious scene that triggered the accusation of fascism is the one in which Callaghan has hunted down serial killer ‘Scorpio’ (Andy Robinson) to San Francisco’s Kezar Stadium, where he is living off-grid in a small room under the grandstand. Scorpio, who has already killed twice, has held the city to ransom and threatens to kill someone each day until he’s given $100,000. Scorpio has now kidnapped a teenage girl, immured her in a ventilated box underground, and upped the ante, demanding a $200,000-dollar ransom from the city for her release. Harry shoots Scorpio in the leg, demanding to know the girl’s whereabouts, but Scorpio refuses to talk, whining about his rights. Harry presses down on Scorpio’s leg wound until Scorpio talks: this is clearly torture, and a denial of Scorpio’s Miranda rights. Harry had already searched Scorpio’s room without a warrant (discovering the rifle with which Scorpio had carried out his killings), thus also abusing his Fourth Amendment rights.
Because of all this, Scorpio’s confession and the rifle are deemed inadmissible evidence, so Scorpio is released, though the girl is finally found: raped, tortured and murdered by Scorpio. After being scolded and warned by the Mayor and the District Attorney, Harry obsessively surveils Scorpio, convinced he’ll kill again, though he doesn’t cross any professional boundaries. At no point is Harry technically a “vigilante”. He is also proved right: Scorpio goes on to kidnap a school bus full of children, threatening to kill them unless he is put on a flight out of the country and paid a ransom. Harry is asked by the Mayor to take the ransom money to Scorpio, but he refuses. Instead, he goes to rescue the children and hunt Scorpion down, without official sanction. After a chase through a cement works he wounds Scorpio then gives him an ultimatum, shooting him dead when Scorpio reaches for his gun—he doesn’t "execute’" him, as some critics of the film have claimed.
Critic Robert Ebert, in his review of the movie, wrote that the film’s “moral position” was fascist, but fascism isn’t a moral position, it’s a political ideology and system. Fascist violence—whatever its darker, hidden psychosexual motives—is always politically motivated. Harry patently is not.
