This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as the review of the unedited version would be more negative

It’s time for Harry to return and start putting some justice back in the streets. Magnum Force tackles the topic of vigilante justice which is pretty fun because usually you only see that in a superhero story. Sure, non superhero movies sometimes have this as well for the main character but it’s a little rarer to have the complete hero having to take on a vigilante. Especially when the hero is someone who is willing to skirt the rules quite a bit like Dirty Harry.

The movie starts with a crook managing to get away on a technicality and preparing to enjoy his new freedom. Unfortunately for him, he bumps into a cop who is just not having this and gets brutally murdered. Harry decides to look into this although he is warned not to look too closely. A man like Harry is going to try for answers and those answers may not be to the department’s best interests. It’s a touchy subject after all and so naturally Harry doesn’t listen to them at all. He’s going to do whatever he wants and that’s really the final answer. He does have a partner, but there’s not much point talking about him because you know how that tends to go.

In a way this movie plays out like a part mystery. Who is this rogue cop? There are several suspects because in the movie we meet a new rookie unit that is formed of several prodigies. These guys are all experts with a gun and are definitely not afraid to use it. So which one of them has gone off the deep end and started executing criminals? Sure, it might sound like a good idea at first and that’s why it is always such a tempting proposition but it becomes a super slippery slope. In fact we can go over that a bit in this review because the movie also goes over this in detail.

Basically as Harry points out, the rogue cop is playing judge, jury, and executioner. Yes, Harry has had to wrestle with these themes even in the first film. Sometimes you do have to pull the trigger but there’s a big difference between doing that either in duress, a split second situation, a one time event, and casually going around bumping off all criminals. You have to be absolutely sure that the person doing the crime is actually guilty and figuring out a lot of similar things as well. After all, if you got this wrong, then you are murdering an innocent person.

In a perfect world, if it were possible to perfectly know if someone was guilty of particularly heinous crimes then I doubt that anyone would have a problem deleting them. If you could press a button and it only deleted people that you knew committed the crime like cold blooded murder in a non acceptable circumstance, then that’d be great. Of course, that is not something that can ever happen. The thing with vigilantism is that you can’t promote it because then it’ll spread and inevitably be used by someone who doesn’t subscribe to the same values. It puts the whole topic in a very dicey spot. You can only really internally root for it and not externally.

Take the opening scene, everyone knows that this guy murdered a bunch of people. He got off on a legal loophole, but that’s all it was…a loophole. When you have actual footage of someone doing something criminal, it can be extremely frustrating to see them out and about again with no problem. The law will never be perfect of course as you can’t stitch every loophole but that’s when vigilantes don’t seem to bad. So in the world of Dirty Harry, you can easily imagine how vigilantes would appear. There is just so much crime and corruption everywhere. The cops seem rather dirty at times so the only way to put a criminal off the streets is to do it yourself.

Of course, using a cop to do this means the whole agency could be compromised. So it makes for a pretty good battle of ideals throughout the movie. Then you also have the battle of generations. Harry is an older guy who has been around the block many times before. He knows how to fight and make command decisions but can he handle any of these younger cops? We see that they are near perfect on the gun range and hold their own in a shooting exhibition. Of course, Harry threw the latter so we can assume he would have won or at least tied there but it doesn’t change the fact that these guys are really evenly matched.

Harry is always a likable character and he does tend to carry the film at a lot of points. He’s certainly not flawless. The guy makes mistakes like anybody else but he’s always at least fighting for something. He still believes that the badge means something after all and this kind of main character is always fun. I also like the main villain. I won’t say who it is but the film definitely takes a twist out of a mystery film with how it’s handled. It makes for a really solid climax all the way around.

The film does show off what a lawless city it takes place in so there is definitely some grit here though. The murders can be a little bloody at times of course. There is some fanservice running around and most of the characters are meant to be rather unlikable. I like the young cops and Harry but pretty much everyone else here tends to be annoying. I actually thought Harry’s partner wasn’t bad but you just feel like he’s absolutely doomed the whole time. Nobody can hang with Harry for long. That’s just how it always is. He’s built different for this kind of thing.

Overall, Magnum Force is a pretty solid film. It’s definitely a long one so there is a whole lot of time for investigation here and debates on what is going on. The movie avoids being too black and white on the issue which I appreciated as it is a bit of a nuanced topic. It may be an uncomfortable one for most but there is a reason why vigilante justice is so popular after all. The film absolutely lands the ending as well so it makes for a satisfying watch. It’s probably a film that would be a little too intense for younger watchers but I wouldn’t say it is completely off its rocker either. I do think the film showed some restraint overall since it could easily mess with the audience’s emotions to make the vigilantism even more accepted based on how awful the criminals are. You are more left to assume based on context and such rather than shown the various crimes for the most part which is always the best way to go. So yeah this is definitely the film to watch if you want a compelling action title.

Overall 6/10