The Dead Pool (1988) Warner Bros./Action RT: 91 minutes Rated R (language, strong violence, drug use) Director: Buddy Van Horn Screenplay: Steve Sharon Music: Lalo Schifrin Cinematography: Jack N. Green Release date: July 13, 1988 (US) Cast: Clint Eastwood, Patricia Clarkson, Liam Neeson, Evan C. Kim, David Hunt, Michael Currie, Michael Goodwin, Darwin Gillett, Anthony Charnota, Christopher Beale, John Allen Vick, Jim Carrey. Box Office: $37.9 million (US)
Rating: ** ½
All good things must come to an end, even the Dirty Harry series. I just wish it went out on a higher note than The Dead Pool. I’m not saying it’s a bad movie; it’s merely a half-assed one. For one thing, everybody involved appears to be on autopilot. Even Clint Eastwood more or less phones it in for the fifth and final time as Inspector Harry Callahan. At times, it doesn’t even feel like a real Dirty Harry movie. Also, it has a thin plot albeit not an uninteresting one. The problem is director Buddy Van Horn (Any Which Way You Can) doesn’t do too much with the premise.
Once again, Harry is in the crosshairs of some unsavory types. This time, it’s the mob boss (Charnota, The Don Is Dead) he helped put away with his testimony in court. The press hails him a hero for it. The mob boss wants him dead. He sends hitmen to kill Harry, but you know they’re going to end up in body bags for their efforts. His superiors initially want to take him off the street and transfer him to public relations. We all know how that will play out, don’t we? Instead, they leave him where he is and assign him a new partner, Al Quan (Kim, The Kentucky Fried Movie), to watch his back.
They’re assigned to investigate the death of Johnny Squares (Carrey, Ace Ventura 1 & 2), a popular rock star who dies of an overdose while filming a low-budget horror movie for temperamental director Peter Swan (Neeson, Taken 1-3). However, it’s NOT a simple overdose; he was murdered. Harry and Quan uncover evidence that it could be connected to a morbid game Swan and other crew members are playing. It’s called a “dead pool” and it works like this. The player lists eight celebrities who are likely to die within a certain amount of time. Whoever has the most dead celebrities on their list at the end is the winner. Quan finds such a list in the possession of a victim of a robbery attempt at a Chinese restaurant. Guess what? Harry’s name is on it too.
There’s also an underdeveloped romantic subplot in The Dead Pool as Harry gets involved with Samantha Walker (Clarkson, Shutter Island), a reporter who wants to do an in-depth interview with him. He’s not interested in doing one, but he is interested in getting to know her. Now we all know the real reason she’s around. It gives the bad guy somebody to kidnap to get Harry’s attention. Oh yeah, I forgot to talk about him. Somebody starts killing off the people on Swan’s list. Obviously, it’s not Swan. That’s about it.
The Dead Pool isn’t without a few good scenes like the Chinese restaurant robbery foiled by Harry. He tells one of the robbers he forgot his fortune cookie. He goes on to say, “It says ‘You’re s— out of luck.’” before blowing him and his partners away. After another failed attempt on his life, Callahan visits the mob boss at San Quentin. He threatens him with violent retribution at the hands of a burly, vicious inmate if anything happens to him. There’s an interesting car chase, one that involves a radio-controlled car packed with C-4 that recalls Bullitt with vehicles speeding up and down the hills of San Francisco. As for the classic Dirty Harry line, we get “Opinions are like a-holes. Everybody has one.” It didn’t become part of our lexicon like “Go ahead, make my day”, but it’s an accurate statement nonetheless.
The heavy metal band Guns N’ Roses not only provides the song (“Welcome to the Jungle”) Squares lip-synchs for the music video-within-the-movie-within-the-movie; they also show up in a couple of scenes. Lead guitarist Slash gets to fire a giant harpoon cannon for Swan’s movie. By taking the time to show this, you know it means it will show up again in the finale.
The Dead Pool is entertaining, but it fails to live up to its full potential. There was an excellent opportunity to explore the idea of the ethical responsibilities of the media, but it’s only touched upon. It’s never explored with any real depth. Also, Clarkson’s character isn’t especially interesting. In fact, she’s pretty annoying. But like I said, we know why she’s there. As for the identity of the bad guy, it’s a serious case of “WHO CARES?” It’s like the makers just wanted to resolve things quickly and be done with it. It’s lazy and indifferent. I hate to say this about a Dirty Harry movie, but The Dead Pool is disappointingly mediocre. It has some decent action scenes, but the overall effect is underwhelming. It’s not an ideal way to say goodbye to an old friend.
