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Dirty Harry

Dirty Harry is a 1971 film directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood, as Harry Callahan, a San Francisco cop with a bad attitude, a big gun, and a reputation for unorthodox, dangerous, but effective methods that tended toward the extralegal.

The movie is popularly credited for being responsible for the famous line: "Do you feel lucky, punk?", although this is in fact a misquote. The actual quote follows. To set it up, after quite a bit of gunplay, Dirty Harry is standing over the criminal with his .44 Magnum, and the criminal's gun is but inches from his hand. Does he grab it, or ...

"Ah Ah, I know what you're thinking, punk. You're thinkin', 'Did he fire six shots or only five?' Now, to tell you the truth, I've forgot myself in all this excitement. But being as this is the .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself a question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?"

This was a very popular crime film that spawned four sequels in which Eastwood reprised the role. The first movie stars Andy Robinson as the psychotic serial killer 'Scorpio'. Of some note, Scorpio was inspired by the real-life Zodiac Killer who terrorized San Francisco in the late 1960s.

Many cop movies since borrow from Eastwood's "alienated cop" role in Dirty Harry.


Dirty Harry became the locals' nickname for a nuclear test of May 19 1953 in Nevada.

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