Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.

I got a lot of my definition of what is cool from my dad. Anyone who’s met him can tell you. My dad’s a cool dad. He’s an old-fashioned Southern gentleman, unflappable and good-humored. Towering and imposing, but with a cowboy charm, cut from the same cloth as a Sam Elliott. He’s got good taste in icons, raising me on a steady diet of Matt Helm and Travis McGee and Ian Fleming and THE DESTROYER and Doc Savage and Lee Marvin and John Wayne and Steve McQueen and ‘70s action cinema and MIAMI VICE and ’80 Cannon fodder and Clint Eastwood. Oh, yes... especially Clint Eastwood.

I saw DIRTY HARRY for the first time on video, probably sometime around ’81 or ’82. By that point, I was familiar with the film and with imagery from it thanks to the MAD magazine parody. With many of the classic R-rated films of that era, that’s how I got familiar with the films first... through the MAD parody. In those days, those parodies were so good, so well-drawn, that when you finally did see the film, it felt like something you were remembering while you were watching. You really had “seen” the movie in a way. I remember the way MAD drew Andrew Robinson with the bandaged face, and I thought it was crazy and ridiculous until you see the movie and realize that is EXACTLY how Andrew Robinson looks in that bus at the end. When I saw DIRTY HARRY for the first time on VHS, it wasn’t letterboxed, of course, but it still made a hell of an impression on me. I saw both SUDDEN IMPACT and THE DEAD POOL in the theater with my dad, but that first film was unleashed on me at home the first time. With FIRST BLOOD, we saw that one in the theater together. And it was an instant obsession in my house. My dad served in Vietnam, so anytime it came up in movies, it was of particular interest to me. Vietnam was still going on in my lifetime. It was the war I grew up in the shadow of, the ripple effects from it still playing out well into my teenage years. I was always impressed by my dad’s willingness to not only see those films and allow me to see those films, but also to talk to me afterwards about them. The “tortured vet” archetype that was big in the ‘70s and ‘80s was pretty much the opposite of my dad’s experience. When we watched FIRST BLOOD... or DIRTY HARRY for that matter... politics was the last thing on our minds.

To celebrate Father’s Day, I decided on a marathon of films in honor of the coolest guy I know, my dad. Both of these film series were just released on BluRay, so I decided to pit them head-to-head in a series of double-features. The first match-up is the most iconic, of course, since both films managed to resonate enough to set off a whole slew of sequels. Which transfers are the best? Which movies are the best? Which series aged better overall? Let’s kick this off and find out.

The Warner Bros. Blu-Ray box for the DIRTY HARRY series is a thing of beauty, a nice balance of fun packaging and genuinely jam-packed discs. No surprise based on the overall strength of the Warner catalog program. They excel so regularly on so many diverse types of titles that it’s to be expected at this point. When you put in the BluRay for the first film, it just gives you the quick FBI warning and then launches right into the movie. The moment I saw the vintage Warner shield dissolve into that dizzying close-up of the business end of the sniper rifle, I could see just how sharp this transfer is. It’s a huge improvement over any previous release of the film, and there are myriad details I caught this time that I’ve never seen before. Clint’s sly wink after one of his most infamous lines of dialogue, a gesture that changes the meaning of the scene, was invisible on the original VHS versions, but it’s crystal-clear here. Like the recent high-def BONNIE & CLYDE transfer, another stunner, the flesh tones and shadows and fine grain all seem to reproduce all the qualities of a real film print better than any home video format yet. More and more, I am seeing studios finally start to release material that really shows off just how great the high-def can be for reproducing real film quality. And as a movie? DIRTY HARRY is a masterpiece. A movie star movie with one great scene after another. Entertaining. Provocative. Harry Callahan is a reaction to the era, to things like the Zodiac killer and the public’s mistrust of the police after the ‘60s, and he’s also a reaction to Clint Eastwood’s whole career up to that point and, specifically, to the success of PLAY MISTY FOR ME, which even gets name-checked on a marquee in one scene, just before the bank robbery scene.

Eastwood knew exactly what he was doing in this one, and he seems to relish this character, this opportunity to play thinly-disguised disgust with everyone and everything. Dirty Harry is a walking catharsis, the guy who can’t tolerate the bullshit. Harry gets the shit jobs, but it’s not because he’s being punished... it’s because of the way he problem-solves. He’s a blunt object that you point at a situation if you want it to be over. There won’t be anything graceful or subtle about what Callahan does, but it’ll get done. A movie like DIRTY HARRY had to happen when it did. It’s just made more impressive because of the way the film entertains so deliberately, even as it breaks taboos with glee. It’s a classic Hollywood movie, no question about it, but it’s also a pretty radical ‘70s picture that wasn’t playing it safe at all. Don Siegel was always a great, taut, smart director, but I don’t think he ever pulled it all together with quite the same panache as he does here. The cast is uniformly great, but it’s the chemistry between psycho Andrew Robinson and badass Eastwood that really defines the film, leading up to the HIGH NOON riff that must have driven audiences to cheers when it first played in ’71.

FIRST BLOOD starts off absolutely great. Ted Kotcheff has never been what anyone would call a great director, but he was solid, and he seemed to understand just how juicy the premise to the movie was. He manages to wring every bit of tension and dread out of the first half of the film, and the way Rambo is cornered into his extreme actions is credible and awful. I think there’s a tremendous sadness to the film, and it works in spite of a stretch near the end of the second act where the film just kind of treads water for a while. There are some sequences I’d forgotten because it’s been so long since I’ve seen the movie, and also because... well... they’re completely forgettable. There are also some strange tonal choices like the scene with the Nation Guard unit that’s practically played as broad slapstick. Still, this is one of the best overall performances by Stallone, and I can see why it became such an instant icon. Like Rocky, this is a character defined by his physical presence and by what he does more than what he says. Stallone has always been best as a silent presence, and that’s not an insult. He’s riveting here, and he does the whole “caged animal” thing really well in the build-up to Rambo’s meltdown.

There is a social commentary at work here in the idea of mistreated veterans who were never able to hit the off switch after the war, and we’re certainly seeing some of the same type of blowback in terms of stateside violence with today’s soldiers, too. I think it’s just a sad inevitability that happens when you get very good at training people to kill. FIRST BLOOD isn’t a heavy-handed message movie, though. It’s an action movie first, a thriller, and it certainly hits its fair share of high notes during its running time. The best scenes are early on, when it’s just Rambo versus Brian Dennehey and his initial group of deputies, including cult director Jack Starett, a young David Caruso and a young Chris Mulkey. Once the situation escalates beyond that, the film deflates a bit. It’s still a solid, smart, powerful little action movie, but for round one...

DECISION: DIRTY HARRY

Happy Father’s Day to all of you fellow father geeks out there, including and especially Jay Knowles, the original Father Geek. These days, I am starting to be able to take Toshi to more movies, as he has been bitten by the bug. In the last few weeks, he’s seen WALL-E, KUNG-FU PANDA, and THE INCREDIBLE HULK with me, and it’s been amazing to be able to enjoy these movies with my son, watching how they affect him and seeing the way his imagination ignites after each of them. And watching these two movies tonight, I feel connected to my dad, who is 3,000 miles away, and connected to the process by which each of us in the father-son chain passes down these things we love from generation to generation. It's one of the many, many things that make the job of fatherhood so much fun.

Tomorrow, I’ll be back to throw RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II and MAGNUM FORCE up against each other to see which one kicks more ass. Until then...

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles