Headscratchers / Dirty Harry

• If Scorpio gets hit in the leg with a .44 bullet, how the hell is he running mere days/weeks later??
  • The gunshot wasn't a direct hit - if you look at it while Harry is walking up to him it looked like it was basically a graze that hit the side of his leg instead of a clean shot - painful and bloody but not actually particularly physically debilitating. The better question is how he was running shortly after getting stabbed with a 6-inch switchblade straight into his thigh.
• Okay, at the end of the first movie, Harry gets rid of his badge and is clearly not a cop anymore. However, in the sequel, he is still a cop working in the force, as though nothing had ever happened. Would someone like to explain that?
  • Magnum Force opens with Harry on loan to Stakeout, so maybe he was demoted as a result of his actions during the first film. Or for losing his badge.
  • Chances are that Harry threw his badge away in a moment of anger. On his long journey back to the precinct however, he likely had time to consider his actions and realize that for as pissed off at the law as he was, if he wasn't around to occasionally bend the rules then the bad guys would have an even easier time. When he got back he probably just said that he lost his badge during the long chase and fight with Scorpio.
  • Harry probably thought he would be fired for his actions but public opinion would undoubtedly have shifted to his side after saving the busload of kids forcing the police department to reconsider. In 'The Dead Pool' Harry's journalist girlfriend shows him a load of newspaper clippings from his past career, one of which refers to him as a hero for killing Scorpio.
• At the end of the first movie, Harry saves a kid from Scorpio. After Harry kills Scorpio, he throws his badge into the water and walks away from the lake. Where did the child go? He is not seen in the wide shot of Harry before the credits. In fact it appears that after he falls away from Scorpio he vanishes completely.
  • Doylist: it was a continuity oversight, or the editor/director felt including the kid in the shot was unnecessarily distracting from the moment. Watsonian: the kid booked it out of there so fast after Scorpio was shot in the shoulder, he was nowhere in the area by the time the wide shot showed up.
• How does Scorpio get his hands on that armory he apparently has? He's so poor he has to live at Kezar Stadium, and that rifle and MP-40 would cost some serious money, even on the black market.
  • Maybe he can indeed afford to live somewhere else, but he chooses to live at the stadium because he wants to spend all his money on weapons?
• After the Scorpio killer is arrested, a plot point is raised that all the evidence was illegaly obtained and that the Scorpio can't be tried. Even after Harry's insistence that there has to be something they can charge him with, his superiors say they have no recourse but let him walk away free. But, shouldn't he also be charged with the attempted murder of two police officers? I mean, I get that Harry's testimony alone would be put in question considering the circumstances of the arrest, but Chico was also there and even got shot.
  • The entire point of the scene (as discussed in the Hollywood Law entry) is that the idiots in the DA's office don't WANT to charge him with anything and are lying/ignorant about the actual laws, there is more than enough evidence legally obtained to put him away for life, but they're trying to just make it all go away quietly.
    • Yes, the big tipoff is that the DA had asked a judge from an appeal court to be there when he calls Harry in. The DA has already decided he doesn't WANT to charge Scorpio, and now he's just trying to justify the decision by calling in a single judge that he knows shares his opinion. That's why Harry is so pissed at them - because he knows that they could convict Scorpio if they actually wanted to, there's a plethora of evidence of the other killings and his assault on Callahan/Gonzalez, but the DA doesn't even want to TRY.
• Why does Scorpio panic when Harry intercepts the bus? Granted he’s not stable, but he’s had Harry’s number the entire movie and Harry can’t exactly do anything while he’s on the roof of a moving bus. On top of this he has an entire bus full of hostages and there won’t be much Harry would be able to do even if he were somehow able to get in the bus.
  • Because this is the man who has previously stabbed him in the leg, shot him, tortured him for information and followed him around off duty. He knows Harry is ruthless, dedicated and not going to let a little thing like the law stop him from doing what is right. "Well do you, punk?".
• Why is Harry referred to as an "Inspector"?
  • The San Francisco Police Department refers to its' investigators as Inspectors rather than the more common term of "detective". Very confusing for audiences in countries using the British police rank system where an Inspector would be the equivalent of a US "Lieutenant".

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