Greetings! ScoreKeeper here about to make the day of five Ain’t It Cool readers who submitted their pitches for a sixth Dirty Harry film in hopes of winning a brand new copy of THE DEAD POOL (1986) soundtrack CD autographed by composer Lalo Schifrin.
Cameron Cubbison of Fairfax, Virginia
Old habits die hard. Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan is at it again in THE TWILIGHT KILLINGS.
After a checkered, decades-long career as a San Francisco police inspector, Harry Callahan has left the force and left the city. Long retired, he runs a small bar in Santa Barbara, CA, a place that is as old-school anachronistic as the man himself. Cops he worked with used to come into the bar but now they are all gone. He lives alone, as he has since his wife was mowed down more than forty years ago. Harry Callahan spent his life standing up for the victims of violent crimes, taking to the streets and battling the laziness, loopholes and corruption of the American justice system. It doesn’t matter how many punks and scumbags he put away, more of them always take their place like weeds. He’s old, tired, and the world hasn’t gotten any better. The job was his life, and he is now a man without purpose, just waiting to die.
But the past isn’t about to let him go. In San Francisco, a series of grisly murders are being committed, and the MO is all too familiar to Callahan. Someone is going all over town killing innocent people in the exact same way that the Scorpio Killer did. The rifle, the shell casings, the venues, the victims…they’re all the same. The killings even conform to details that were never released to the press or put on record. Scorpio was the most vile, notorious killer and case of Callahan’s career, his first big one. But Scorpio has been dead for decades. How is this possible? What’s the connection.
Reluctantly, Callahan knows he must return to San Francisco and put it all together. He dusts off his .44 Magnum automag and tries his hand at the target range. It’s as if a day hasn’t gone by. But the odds against Callahan are greater than ever. He’s an outsider looking in. There are no cop acquaintances he can rely on, and furthermore, the entire nature of law enforcement has changed. It’s a different generation that relies on DNA and forensic evidence and computers. They don’t know what it’s like to hit the streets old school and make the answers present themselves. Callahan will solve the killings, find the connection to Scorpio and bring the copycat to justice…even if he has to go to prison for doing so. And just maybe, he will find a sense of peace and fulfillment.
There will be some great old-school car chases and gun play. Clint could totally still do it, just check out Gran Torino. The .44 magnum is a one shot kills all. The film will also be a tightly-wound procedural, and you will never imagine who turns out to be the killer and what their motive is. This will be Clint’s movie all the way, virtually a one-man show. The actor playing the copycat will be an unknown. Emily Deschanel will play a young San Francisco cop…the only one who sees that his old-school methods could be of value. But she’ll have to overcome a reluctant Callahan, who doesn’t want her help because he remembers what happened to Inspector Kate Moore in The Enforcer.
Of course Clint should direct the film because his lean, fluid grace as a filmmaker will keep the action moving, and he knows exactly how the character should be portrayed. Lalo Schifrin’s iconic, moody, score should be used, further reflecting Callahan’s disillusionment, though if Schifrin and Clint wanted to write or augment some new pieces, they would be welcomed. This should be the Unforgiven for Dirty Harry, it should bring the character full circle and to an almost spiritual place, so he can ride out his remaining years in peace.
Annamarie Simpson of Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, United Kingdom
Title: DEAD CERT
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington
Director: Clint Eastwood
Score: Lalo Shifrin (to keep continuity)
Harry comes back from retirement after being framed for a series of 'Punisher-type' murders on the dark, dirty 'frisco streets. Washington is the new cop on his trail and Freeman is the killer. It even seems to the unwitting audience that Harry may indeed be the perpetrator until a change of pace in the last twenty minutes of the movie. A hard-hitting, classic tale with a twist will have the Harry fans drooling to watch this movie.
John Cowlin of Wildwood, Illinois
ONE LIVE ROUND
A Scorpio copycat – labeled by the press as “Pisces” – has been killing his way through San Francisco’s elite. After the mayor’s wife is killed in a limo explosion, 47th Precinct Captain Chico Gonzalez (Reni Santoni, reprising his role) is left with one last option – call in a favor to his first partner, Inspector Harry Callahan, who’s now retired and living peacefully in a cabin in upper state Washington. (“I tried calling, but you didn’t have a phone,” says Gonzalez upon arriving. “They get in the way of all my relaxing,” replies Callahan, cleaning his rifle.) Soon Callahan and Insp. Mike Armondo (Jamie Foxx), Harry’s new, black, gay, gonna-get-killed soon partner, are on the case. Turns out Pisces is a Callahan fanatic, and started killing just to give Harry a hero’s farewell after Harry was kicked off the force years ago for accidentally shooting a librarian.
Keys lines of dialogue:
Chief of Police Garrison (John Amos): “What do you mean you ‘shot a suspect’? You’re not even a police officer!”
Callahan: “I was thinking ‘senior citizen’s arrest’.”
Pisces: (grunting with a bullet in his gut) “I did it for you, Callahan. Now you’re a hero again. Aren’t you…going to…thank me?”
Callahan: “You wouldn’t want me to get all mushy, now, would you?”
(puts second bullet through head)
Starring Brad Dourif as Pisces; Rashida Jones as Janice Reynolds, a reporter doing a retrospective on Harry’s career ; Lance Henrickson as an illiterate hobo who just might’ve seen something; and Josh Peck as a punk kid Harry forces to use a Blackberry to decode a clue.
Erik Malinowski of San Francisco, California
TWIN KILLINGS
Callahan, living in a dingy apartment atop the city’s dangerous Portero Hill neighborhood, wakes up every day, steps onto his porch with his coffee, and looks out at the rising sun over San Francisco Bay. He grew up in this area, and it’s home. Twenty years ago, all the attention around the events of “The Dead Pool” forced him into retirement—and there’s a bitter, unresolved piece of him that longs for the adrenaline rush of police work. But that was a long time ago. The world has apparently moved on.
Except, that is, for one person—Billy Samson, the bastard son of Scorpio, born to a down-and-out prostitute who turned her life around after a one-night stand 30 years ago with the infamous serial killer changed everything. Biding his time, Billy slowly begins his own deadly trail of murder and seduction, solely to lure the aging, bitter Callahan out of retirement so he can avenge his father’s death. Insane like dear ol’ Dad, he eventually kidnaps the daughter (Amanda Seyfried) of the city police commissioner (Harvey Keitel) and uses encrypted webcams and social-networking to taunt the police as Gemini (an astrological homage to Scorpio, as well as his belief that he and Callahan are forever linked, like “twins”). Only after he outwardly references Callahan do police brass enlist his assistance in taking down the elusive Gemini (Michael Shannon).
Only with the help of John Figgins, a street-wise, tech-savvy police detective (Patrick Wilson), and Billy’s guilt-stricken mother Sara Samson, one of the city’s invisible do-good social workers (Susan Sarandon), can Callahan take down Gemini—and finally bury the demons of the past. (Money scene: When Callahan reaches under the bed, dusts off a plan-looking box, and pulls out the ol’ .44 for one last go-around.)
Joe Carnahan (a Sacramento native) directs. Howard Shore scores (something akin to his urban, bluesy work from “The Departed”). A couple of car chases, lots of creepy atmosphere, and a definitive franchise-wrapping ending.
Kyle Bodshaug of Orlando, Florida
2009.
Harry Callahan has been enjoying his near-death retirement of late. He has fallen into the roll of ‘kindly old man’ in his retirement high-rise in San Francisco’s Chinatown and discovered the joys of internet videos and Facebook.
Outside of his window, however, whispers of an old power reclaiming the streets of Chinatown. A name never spoken out loud- The Wing Kong. Of course every cop in the city heard about Jack Burton and the events of the Summer of ‘86, but Harry thought it was an urban legend. Until the day his handicap parking space was blocked- by the Porkchop Express!
Learning that Jack Burton has been kidnapped by Bill Lo Pan (played by WATCHMEN’s Jackie Earle Haley in his first CAUCASIAN TO ASIAN MOTION CAPTURE role) and that BURTON was only Jack’s middle name, Harry enlists the help of Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) to spring Jack from the Three New Storms before he is sent to THE HELL OF THE UPSIDE DOWN SINNERS and Lo Pan can once again rule the streets of San Fransisco. INDEED!
Director John Carpenter returns to form, along with Kurt Russell, Dennis Dun, Kim Catrall and Doug Jones as the Chinese Wildman. Score composed and conducted by Joaquin Phoenix and Johnny Greenwood.
INTERIOR. PORK CHOP EXPRESS CAB. NIGHT. Harry and Jack, father and son, finally reunited. Considering what they just witnessed, there are questions in each man’s face.
JACK
How in the hell did you make that shot at your age, pappy?
HARRY
At my age? It ain’t in the reflexes.
You know, Jackie, this wouldn’t have happened
If you didn’t off Lo Pan back in ‘86. You know my policy.
JACK
(Indignantly.) Yeah, yeah. When I see a 7 foot tall monster goin’ after Gracie with a ‘needle of love’ and a hard on, I knife the bastard. That’s Jack Burton’s policy!
Harry turns and gives Jack that trademark scowl.
HARRY
Who?
JACK
Jack Burton… Callahan.
Man, that last one is wacky as hell but I can’t say that if that movie were made I wouldn’t want to see it.
Congratulations to each of the five winners and thank you for all who submitted.
I’d also like to thank Aleph Records and Lalo Schifrin for providing the CDs. They’ll be shipped out early next week to each of the five winners.
I’ve got more contests and giveaways on the horizon so keep checking back and be sure to enter early and often.
Until then, let’s all dream of that sixth Dirty Harry film…
ScoreKeeper!!!
