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Dirty Harry:The Movies #3
The Enforcer
paperback, fine (as new)
192 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 7, 2019
3.1/5
The Enforcer is probably my least-favourite Dirty Harry sequel, not because it's bad in any particular way, but because it interests me the least. It doesn't help that Wesley Morgan's writing is probably the worst I've seen from these novelizations so far, with an alarming number of typos and the occasional spiel into unnecessary details (like a page and a half on the history of Alcatraz), and his tendency to not use numbers (instead describing Harry's magnum as a forty-four, or writing years down as nineteen sixty-two, as examples). It kind of annoyed me.
The plot is simplicity itself--a gang of no-good punks steal weapons in one of the easiest heists I've ever read and then hold the city ransom with said weapons, one of which includes a bunch of LAWS rocket launchers. Neat little toys. Harry takes things personal when they kill one of his friends and sets out to nail them, but of course he has to do it with the help of an inexperienced Personnel and Records officer who has just been moved to Homicide for purely political reasons, named Kate Moore. Kate's a decent character in her own right, though Tyne Daly's performance in the film gave her a lot more emotional levity than Morgan's writing allows. In the novelization, she comes off as more of a chip-on-her-shoulder rookie who's way in over her head, rather than the strong-willed version of Daly. It's her part in the story, and her reasons for getting the job in homicide, that stand the test of time, as today we see plenty of individuals previously considered minorities getting positions or roles that they haven't yet earned, or aren't ready for, simply because it's considered progressive, and PC. I feel like that's a mistaken approach to the situation; just train them properly like everyone else. I was completely on Harry's side in that regard, and I suppose that's how it was meant to be taken by the readers considering the ineptitude of Harry's superiors. If anything, The Enforcer is a precautionary tale.
Its main plotline is actually less interesting than its parter subplot. Harry must battle psychopaths again, both in the name of revenge and in the name of justice. These psychopaths have no other characteristics except that they're sneaky and they enjoy killing, and their motivations are fairly weak in the end. They just aren't interesting, and for a while it seemed Morgan wasn't interested in them either, since he writes (I think) a good fifty or sixty pages before seemingly remembering that they're the bad guys.
It's a serviceable tie-in but not much else.
The Enforcer is probably my least-favourite Dirty Harry sequel, not because it's bad in any particular way, but because it interests me the least. It doesn't help that Wesley Morgan's writing is probably the worst I've seen from these novelizations so far, with an alarming number of typos and the occasional spiel into unnecessary details (like a page and a half on the history of Alcatraz), and his tendency to not use numbers (instead describing Harry's magnum as a forty-four, or writing years down as nineteen sixty-two, as examples). It kind of annoyed me.
The plot is simplicity itself--a gang of no-good punks steal weapons in one of the easiest heists I've ever read and then hold the city ransom with said weapons, one of which includes a bunch of LAWS rocket launchers. Neat little toys. Harry takes things personal when they kill one of his friends and sets out to nail them, but of course he has to do it with the help of an inexperienced Personnel and Records officer who has just been moved to Homicide for purely political reasons, named Kate Moore. Kate's a decent character in her own right, though Tyne Daly's performance in the film gave her a lot more emotional levity than Morgan's writing allows. In the novelization, she comes off as more of a chip-on-her-shoulder rookie who's way in over her head, rather than the strong-willed version of Daly. It's her part in the story, and her reasons for getting the job in homicide, that stand the test of time, as today we see plenty of individuals previously considered minorities getting positions or roles that they haven't yet earned, or aren't ready for, simply because it's considered progressive, and PC. I feel like that's a mistaken approach to the situation; just train them properly like everyone else. I was completely on Harry's side in that regard, and I suppose that's how it was meant to be taken by the readers considering the ineptitude of Harry's superiors. If anything, The Enforcer is a precautionary tale.
Its main plotline is actually less interesting than its parter subplot. Harry must battle psychopaths again, both in the name of revenge and in the name of justice. These psychopaths have no other characteristics except that they're sneaky and they enjoy killing, and their motivations are fairly weak in the end. They just aren't interesting, and for a while it seemed Morgan wasn't interested in them either, since he writes (I think) a good fifty or sixty pages before seemingly remembering that they're the bad guys.
It's a serviceable tie-in but not much else.
March 20, 2009
I just finished reading this. I only remember the last 10 pages, so I'll review them.
There are so many things I find easier to swallow in movies than in books. The Enforcer has never been my favorite Dirty Harry movie (it's a tie between the first two), but it's competent entertainment, and the denouement, in which Inspector Harry "Dirty Harry" Callahan and his partner, Inspector Kate Moore, save the mayor of San Francisco from a bunch of militant punks who are holding him hostage on the island of Alcatraz, is as good a way to end the picture as any other.
When written in book form, however, its ridiculousness becomes much more apparent. Harry, armed with a six-shot .44 Magnum, and Kate, armed with a service revolver, go up against four men, each of whom is armed with a fully automatic AR-15. This would be fine if some sort of stealth were involved, but Harry stages a frontal assault on the island. He doesn't even have much a plan. According to Wesley Morgan, the credited writer for this novelization, he looked at maps of the island while in the fireboat that dropped him off.
Novelizations are a disposable medium, but very often they're not nearly as bad as they could be, and the writers who made a buck writing them gussy up the action so that characters have internal lives and motivations not implicit in the film version. And very often the writers take pains to stage action scenes that actually make more sense than the versions that made it to the screen. Not so with Morgan. He's content to recite the action in roughly the same way a child will who's seen a film and is describing its action verbatim to classmates. Also like a child, Morgan pads his book report. The first page and a half of the last chapter, which immediately follow the scene in which Harry finds out where the mayor is being held, grind the action to a screeching halt with a brief history of Alcatraz island. Did you know that the Spanish discovered the island in 1775, and named it Isla de los Alcatraces, which means "Island of the Pelicans"? Or that in the '70s, Indian activists occupied the island? Yeah, so did I. I took the tour when I was in San Francisco. Now stop wasting my time and get to the scene where Dirty Harry blows up the last bad guy with a LAW rocket.
There are so many things I find easier to swallow in movies than in books. The Enforcer has never been my favorite Dirty Harry movie (it's a tie between the first two), but it's competent entertainment, and the denouement, in which Inspector Harry "Dirty Harry" Callahan and his partner, Inspector Kate Moore, save the mayor of San Francisco from a bunch of militant punks who are holding him hostage on the island of Alcatraz, is as good a way to end the picture as any other.
When written in book form, however, its ridiculousness becomes much more apparent. Harry, armed with a six-shot .44 Magnum, and Kate, armed with a service revolver, go up against four men, each of whom is armed with a fully automatic AR-15. This would be fine if some sort of stealth were involved, but Harry stages a frontal assault on the island. He doesn't even have much a plan. According to Wesley Morgan, the credited writer for this novelization, he looked at maps of the island while in the fireboat that dropped him off.
Novelizations are a disposable medium, but very often they're not nearly as bad as they could be, and the writers who made a buck writing them gussy up the action so that characters have internal lives and motivations not implicit in the film version. And very often the writers take pains to stage action scenes that actually make more sense than the versions that made it to the screen. Not so with Morgan. He's content to recite the action in roughly the same way a child will who's seen a film and is describing its action verbatim to classmates. Also like a child, Morgan pads his book report. The first page and a half of the last chapter, which immediately follow the scene in which Harry finds out where the mayor is being held, grind the action to a screeching halt with a brief history of Alcatraz island. Did you know that the Spanish discovered the island in 1775, and named it Isla de los Alcatraces, which means "Island of the Pelicans"? Or that in the '70s, Indian activists occupied the island? Yeah, so did I. I took the tour when I was in San Francisco. Now stop wasting my time and get to the scene where Dirty Harry blows up the last bad guy with a LAW rocket.
August 5, 2021
Pretty good and followed the plot of the movie well. A quick read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews