The Dead Pool

1988 "Dirty Harry Just Learned A New Game."
6.3| 1h31m| R| en| More Info
Released: 13 July 1988 Released
Producted By: Malpaso Productions
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

Dirty Harry Callahan returns for his final film adventure. Together with his partner Al Quan, he must investigate the systematic murder of actors and musicians. By the time Harry learns that the murders are a part of a sick game to predict the deaths of celebrities before they happen, it may be too late...

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Sleeper-Cell There is a grittiness missing from this last installment of the Dirty Harry series. It had been missing from most of the films but it is really gone here. Harry in this one looks bored, I'm not sure why he would be assigned to the death of a drug addicted celebrity. Why is a remote controlled car being used as a means of assassination? There seems to be a lot of bad guys running around here. Maybe it was my waning interest and the films failure to engage me but I didn't really understand what was happening nor did I care enough to watch it again or rewind to work it out. Jim Carrey's small part is hammy and out of place. Liam Neeson looks the part but also fails to impress. Dirty Harry using a harpoon gun looks more like an attempt at Rambo than a cop dealing with crime. Not to mention the bad guy he shoots with it is armed with a gun and had ample to time to shoot him first. It just lacks the impact of the first film.
ferbs54 Just watched another one that I had never seen before: the 5th and final entry in the Dirty Harry series, "The Dead Pool" (1988); the only one in this classic series that I had not previously experienced. In this one, a serial killer has been eliminating famous celebrities, one by one, from the "dead pool" betting list of the title. Harry Callahan himself appears on that list, which makes finding the wacko/psycho guilty of these crimes a bit more personal for him than usual. The No. 1 suspect is apparently a sleazy horror director, well played by Liam Neeson. (The star of this director's latest production, a heroin junkie/rock idol played by the young Jim Carrey, here billed as "James Carrey," had been the first victim of this kill list.) Soon, a pretty TV reporter (Patricia Clarkson) gets involved in the case, as well. This film is perhaps the least of the five Dirty Harry films but still provides much in the way of action and food for thought. The picture's highlight is most certainly the car chase that transpires toward the end, in which Harry and his Chinese partner are chased through the San Francisco streets by a bomb-carrying, remote-controlled mini toy car, in a sequence that is most likely a homage to the classic car chase in "Bullitt." Clint Eastwood is effortlessly cool as the film's lead character, and does get to deliver any number of amusing lines. My favorite such comes when he is about to shoot the psycho at the film's end with a tremendous harpoon cannon: "You're out of bullets...which means you're sh_t out of luck!" Director Buddy Van Horn does a very nice job at keeping things moving along here, and in all, the film looks great and is fairly satisfying...although it is perhaps best that the producers called it quits with Dirty Harry right here....
Red-Barracuda Clint Eastwood returns for the fifth time as the tough San Francisco cop Inspector Callaghan in this final Dirty Harry movie. This time he has to contend with a betting pool in which participants try to predict which celebrity will die first. A serial killer starts to make the game become more relevant by starting to bump members of the list off in a variety of grisly ways. Harry's unwanted newly found fame finds him on the list and a potential target for the killer.This entry in the series has definitely got a good concept. It's an idea that should really have been executed better though and unfortunately the film is a somewhat routine affair, made worse by a little too many stupid scenes. There are two threads to the narrative. One involves a Mafia don who Harry put in jail trying to have him executed by getting his henchmen on the outside to take him out; while the second, and main, plot strand focuses on the dead pool serial killings themselves. The latter idea is a decent one, but the whole Mafia thread was pretty woeful and unconvincing. Harry makes the Mafia boss and gangsters look like hopeless unthreatening chumps – it's not very convincing, it includes some lame humour and quite honestly could have been completely removed without any damage to the overall film whatsoever. The dead pool part of the story looks at wider aspects than simply a serial killer investigation; it considers the role of sensationalist media and the influence of violent entertainment. The latter aspect is brought out by the inclusion of a horror film director played in a remarkably annoying fashion by Liam Neeson. This guy directs films with moronically generic titles like 'Night of the Slasher'; I mean, honestly, could the script writers not have come up with something a little more convincing than this? Anyway, the focus on Neeson's tiresome character allows for the film to sneer at such violent movies but at the end of the day The Dead Pool is a pretty violent film itself, so it has something of a cheek denouncing violent films as a plot point!More predictably, Harry has yet another new unwanted partner to assist him, an Asian American who, needless to say, has some kung fu moves which he employs when apprehending a criminal. It's this kind of daftness that makes this Dirty Harry the silliest instalment in the series, as well as a car chase where Callaghan and his partner are chased through the streets of San Francisco by a tiny remote-control model car with a bomb attached to it. It's so ridiculous it's what would have happened if the famous car chase in Bullit (1968) had been directed by Andy Sidaris. Lastly, for additional campy value we have a pre-fame Jim Carrey portraying a hair metal rock star whose latest song is 'Welcome to the Jungle'. When this film came out Guns 'n' Roses were pretty unknown so few people associated this song with them, to hear it now trying to be passed off as by anyone other than them is pretty strange to say the least; the members of the group even appear as background fodder in a couple of scenes.Despite its obvious shortfalls The Dead Pool is pretty entertaining for the most part. It's undoubtedly kind of silly but it gets the job done. Some of the clichés, irritating characters and rubbish humour do bring it down a peg or two but it has enough efficient muscular cop thriller dynamics to ensure that it is still a decent enough watch.
seymourblack-1 The formula for the "Dirty Harry" movies had been well established by the time "The Dead Pool" was released and true to form, for this, his final appearance, the famous maverick cop gets involved in shootouts, car chases and all sorts of trouble with his bosses. His contempt for authority, bureaucracy and the media remain undiminished and his modus operandi, which entails shooting all criminals dead continues to save the tax-payers shed-loads of money and avoids any problems with judges who might decide to set the bad guys free on some technicality. Fortunately, despite all the dangers of his job, he also continues to provide plenty of laughs with his regular supply of wisecracks which often carry a sting in the tail.The publicity he gets after providing testimony in court that puts a San Francisco mafia boss behind bars, makes Detective Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) a local celebrity but also a target for the Mafioso's henchmen who attempt to eliminate him when they ambush him in his car. After surviving this attempt on his life, Callahan and his new partner Detective Inspector Al Quan (Evan C Kim) are assigned to investigate the death of rock star Johnny Squares (Jim Carrey) who'd been making a music video under the supervision of horror movie director Peter Swan (Liam Neeson). A little while later, Callahan and Quan see a robbery taking place in a Chinese restaurant and Callahan kills a number of the robbers before Quan uses his impressive martial arts skills to subdue and arrest another one.Callahan and Quan discover that a customer killed in the restaurant robbery was Peter Swan's production accountant who was carrying a list of names in his pocket. Further investigations reveal that the producer was a participant in a gambling game (called "the dead pool") in which those involved, placed bets on which local celebrities would die by a predetermined date. A well-known movie critic and a talk show host are also murdered as the serial killings continue and, as all the victims are on Peter Swan's dead pool list, he becomes the prime suspect. Callahan isn't convinced however and continues to pursue the killer with all the determination that anyone whose name also appears on Swan's list naturally would.Callahan's unlikely love interest in this movie is a TV reporter who he's forced to co-operate with and whose single-minded determination to get a sensational story overrules any considerations about decency or good taste. Examples of this are when she aggressively pursues Squares' girlfriend who's absolutely distraught after learning of her fiancé's death and when she starts to commentate live in a filmed report of a disturbed man's attempted suicide. Patricia Clarkson is very good as this highly-motivated woman and there are also great contributions from Liam Neeson as the detestable movie director and Jim Carrey as the drug-addicted rock star who lip-synchs colourfully to the "Guns 'n' Roses" track "Welcome To The Jungle". Evan C Kim is also surprisingly good as Callahan's likable partner.There are some highly amusing sequences in this movie such as the "Bullitt" inspired car chase in which Callahan is pursued by a radio-controlled toy car that's loaded with explosives and a terrifically over-the-top confrontation with the villain of the piece, when he arrives armed with a huge harpoon!! Clint Eastwood is predictably good as he follows Callahan's simplistic code, shows contempt for numerous people, blows away the bad guys and miraculously avoids any form of injury.During their 17-year-run, the "Dirty Harry" films provided a great deal of entertainment and thrills for audiences as well as a certain amount of interest as Callahan's character developed in subtle ways in each of the five movies. "The Dead Pool" has an interesting plot and provided a worthy final addition to the series.