Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0All 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<\/strong>. I’m not saying it\u2019s 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\u2019t 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\u2019t do too much with the premise.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Once again, Harry is in the crosshairs of some unsavory types. This time, it\u2019s 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\u2019re 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0They\u2019re 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\u2019s 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\u2019s called a \u201cdead pool\u201d 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\u2019s name is on it too.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0There’s also an underdeveloped romantic subplot in The Dead Pool <\/strong>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\u2019s around. It gives the bad guy somebody to kidnap to get Harry\u2019s attention. Oh yeah, I forgot to talk about him. Somebody starts killing off the people on Swan\u2019s list. Obviously, it\u2019s not Swan. That\u2019s about it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0The Dead Pool <\/strong>isn\u2019t 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, \u201cIt says \u2018You\u2019re s— out of luck.\u2019\u201d 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\u2019s 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 \u201cOpinions are like a-holes. Everybody has one.\u201d It didn\u2019t become part of our lexicon like \u201cGo ahead, make my day\u201d, but it\u2019s an accurate statement nonetheless.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0The heavy metal band Guns N\u2019 Roses not only provides the song (\u201cWelcome to the Jungle\u201d) 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\u2019s movie. By taking the time to show this, you know it means it will show up again in the finale.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0The Dead Pool<\/strong> 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\u2019s only touched upon. It\u2019s never explored with any real depth. Also, Clarkson\u2019s character isn\u2019t especially interesting. In fact, she\u2019s pretty annoying. But like I said, we know why she\u2019s there. As for the identity of the bad guy, it\u2019s a serious case of \u201cWHO CARES?\u201d It\u2019s like the makers just wanted to resolve things quickly and be done with it. It\u2019s lazy and indifferent. I hate to say this about a Dirty Harry movie, but The Dead Pool<\/strong> is disappointingly mediocre. It has some decent action scenes, but the overall effect is underwhelming. It\u2019s not an ideal way to say goodbye to an old friend.<\/p>\r\n The Dead Pool (1988)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 91 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, strong violence, drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Buddy Van Horn\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Steve Sharon\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Lalo Schifrin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Jack N. Green\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 13, 1988 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Clint Eastwood, Patricia Clarkson, Liam Neeson, Evan C. Kim, David Hunt, Michael Currie, Michael Goodwin, Darwin Gillett, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-adventure"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":830,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions\/830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/The-Dead-Pool-POSTER.jpg?resize=620%2C925&ssl=1\")
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