Bad day in the office but with guns, and it's not in an office.

A psychopathic sniper is on the loose and our main man (Harry Callahan - Clint Eastwood) is trying to shoot him. But Harry's bosses seem intent on making our hero go by the book and Harry's having none of it...

Because they only give him the dirty jobs.

"Oh! Trips to school on the school bus!! It brought back such happy memories of being smacked in the kisser by the big kid in charge..."

"More guns than you could shake a stick at."

"More sneers than you could shake a gun at."

"It is amazing that the school bus managed to hit that pile of sand which looks like it was in the middle of nowhere."

"Did you know that Eastwood actually jumped from the bridge onto the school bus... thank goodness the bus was only travelling at 1 mile an hour when he did it."

"Has anyone else noticed that Eastwood has a very big head for his shoulders?"

"BANG! Oh keep the noise down I'm trying to sleep."

Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) is a plain clothes police inspector in San Francisco.

Harry doesn't get on with his superiors, presumably because he doesn't follow orders although he seems well motivated which must count for something.

His bosses are determined for Harry to go by the book, but Harry is determined to do the right thing. His long term career prospects don't look too good when he eventually gets to kill the sniper at the end of the movie...

Don't fear fans there was a Dirty Harry 2...

From the looks of things, Clint Eastwood was one of the last actors in Hollywood to be offered this movie. Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Steve McQueen and Paul Newman were all offered the role before Eastwood accepted it. Could this have been Sinatra's finest hour?

Eastwood plays a good caricature of a mean and snarly police officer loner. Almost cartoon like at times. Harry is sort of like a Willie Coyote but not accident prone and not a wolf and doesn't shop at The Acme Company... he's just damn keen...

A good and dark thriller and Eastwood is cynical enough to pull it off.

Candy floss in the style of Dirty Harry's outrageously bouffant 1970's hair.

According to the trivia on this movie (IMDB) the actor who plays the killer (Andy Robinson) had to be trained to fire a gun because, when he turned up on set, he kept flinching when the gun banged... Apparently the guy is a pacifist. Once you know this, the movie takes on a whole new perspective - is the bad guy just a crazy vegetarian? Imagine all of the body odour issues that sentence implies... especially in the scene where you have all of those scared school children... see, there is a reason they don't do smelly vision...

Thankfully our crazy shooter baddie-dude gives up and dies reasonably quickly at the end. We can imagine this movie could so easily have degenerated into almost Inspector Clouseau levels of injury bandagement: At the time of the bad guy's demise he was already wearing a nose bandage - what about a bandage around his head? or, say, an arm splint, or even a leg plaster... Imagine all of the shooting-of-crutches away fun our hero Harry could have had...

You are mistaking this movie for Any Which Way But Loose. There is no Orang-utan in this movie. Just very violent shooting, leg crunching and face rucking.

For an ordinary middle class white boy it may take until you get to your mid thirties to get this cynical, so, if you are not in this demographic to start with, probably best to just go out and annoy people for fun.

For the rest of us: Stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom and practice your scowl until you get scowl lines at the corner of your eyes. Everyone has heard of laughter lines, scowl lines take extra effort but will repay you many times over when you want to project the emotion 'I have had enough gawd damit punk' with just your eyes.

No singing to talk about, the crazy shooter guy does a cat crying type scream at points which may count.

A riveting dark and gritty actioner filled with guns going bang or being waved about threateningly and sneers from moody characters. Eastwood is superbly moodily-cynical and you can't help but get on his side, especially as he is just crazily doing the right thing, sod the pension and the income... what drives these people? (Although come to think about it if he wasn't like that then it would have been a much shorter movie, perhaps would only have been made into a Looney Tunes cartoon.)

Has all of the feeling of the 1970's TV cop shows but without the crap bad-boy actors and poorly choreographed dancy-fighting. It is well acted throughout; in fact the bit on the school bus is so good it is painful to watch. Did we spot a Charlies Angel's musical riff in the score at the beginning of this movie?

Apparently Frank Sinatra was going to play Harry but he had a wrist injury so pulled out. That would have been an interesting movie to watch. Eastwood however does not disappoint in the John-Wayne-no-need-to-act-just-be sense. We could watch Eastwood for hours.