The Enforcer (1976)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Main Menu Audio Listing-Cast & Crew Featurette-Harry Callahan/Clint Eastwood: Something Special In Films Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1976
Running Time	92:38
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (33:44)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	James Fargo
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Clint Eastwood Tyne Daly Harry Guardino Bradford Dillman John Mitchum DeVeren BookWalter John Crawford
Case	?
RPI	$34.95	Music	Jerry Fielding

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 1.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 1.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French Italian Dutch Arabic Spanish Portuguese German English for the Hearing Impaired Italian for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    They have introduced a few twists on regular Dirty Harry elements. For one thing, one of Harry's partners isn't killed until after he and Harry are split up.

    This is another Dirty Harry movie without a tagline. The closest we get is Harry saying "Marvellous" occasionally. 

    This movie drives home how much things have changed since this movie was made. The cars are a bit old-fashioned, but that's nothing special. Most of the police carry revolvers. Women's Liberation is at its height. But perhaps the most obvious difference is mobile phones - Harry calls in from public phones. It's also clear that the disposable shoulder-fired rocket was a brand-new thing - the film-makers have to demonstrate it for us, so we understand it. The moment they do, we know that Harry will end up using one as an accessory to his hand cannon. There's another thing that's dated - Alcatraz was apparently not a tourist attraction at the time.

    Harry Callahan is always unconventional. His idea of hostage negotiations is novel, as is his way of interviewing candidates for police inspector (the San Francisco Police Department's term for detective - their inspectors are rather lower in rank than ours). After expressing his doubts over the fitness of women as police inspectors in the field it is somewhat fitting that Harry ends up with a female partner (Tyne Daly, of Cagney and Lacey fame).

    There was one scene that showed a distinct lack of attention to detail. They are in an armoury, with guns, ammunition, and explosives all around, and they are firing guns at one another - I was waiting for an explosion, but none came.

    There's one instance of gratuitous nudity as Harry chases a suspect through a house where they're filming what looks like a porn movie. Can't see what the point of this was.

    Albert Popwell's role in this movie is as Mustapha, leader of a black militant group called Uhuru. I like playing "Find Albert" in Dirty Harry movies - he gets a different role every time.

    I do wish they'd get the spelling of Callahan consistent - it's Callahan in the subtitles and extras, but Calahan in the credits.

Video

    This movie is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, 16x9 enhanced. Just as it was made.

    The image is quite sharp. Shadow detail is limited, with a fair bit of unrelieved black, especially in night-time scenes - most of this movie takes place during the day, though. There is no low-level noise to be seen, which is nice.

    Colour is solid, although flesh tones looked a touch orange at times. There was no sign of oversaturation or colour bleed.

    There are very few film artefacts; see 19:20 for about the only instance. There is a little bit of shimmer, but a whole heap of aliasing on car doors, grilles, and Harry's jacket - perhaps it might have been better to make the transfer a little less sharp, to reduce the aliasing.

    The subtitles are easy to read, in white with a black border. They are presented with a simple sans-serif font, located over the bottom of the picture (rather than under it). I spotted one error: there's a reference to a knife which is subtitled as a "boy", when the speaker clearly says "Bowie", as in "Bowie knife".

    The disc is single-sided and dual-layered, formatted as RSDL. The layer change is barely noticeable at 33:44, in a scene change. It is not quite as well hidden as the layer change in Magnum Force, but it's perfectly acceptable.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Once again we get three soundtracks: English, French, and Italian. The English soundtrack is a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack at 384 kbps - that's what I listened to. The other two soundtracks are Dolby Digital mono soundtracks at 192 kbps. Looks like they've standardised the languages for all of the Dirty Harry movies.

    The dialogue is clear and comprehensible. There are no visible audio sync problems.

    The score is by Jerry Fielding. Quite a change from Lalo Schifrin, who scored the first two Dirty Harry movies. The score is a bit sparse, with lots of stretches without any music, but it does cover all of the action sequences.

    The surrounds are used nicely on occasions, but they're not heavily used. The subwoofer is the same - not a huge amount of low bass.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The main menu is static, with music over the main menu. It is a plain photo, but it's functional.

Cast and Crew

    Nothing more than a one page list of the main players.

Featurette: Harry Callahan / Clint Eastwood - Something Special in Films (6:01)

    Another extended trailer, with pretensions to covering all the Dirty Harry films. The excerpts from the film are very grainy.

Trailer (2:12)

    A trailer presented in about 2.35:1. Nothing special. 

    This movie has not been previously released in R1. It is being released as part of the Dirty Harry box set, on 20 November 2001. The features sound like they will be the same.

    The Enforcer is a reasonable DVD of a decent-enough movie - not the best Dirty Harry, but OK.

    The video quality is quite good, except for a large amount of aliasing.

    The audio quality is good, but doesn't really take advantage of the 5.1 mix. The original soundtrack was mono.

    The extras are rather basic.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall