5 Responses to “The Dead Pool”

1. 

   RRA

   February 4th, 2010 at 11:00 pm

   Yeah this is the weakest of the series. It follows the franchise formula with the laughs, badass moments, action, and lines. But it’s something.

   My theory? Each of those previous 4 movies were about a theme of which to build the formula around, and for the most part well-crafted. The original was of course supposedly crooks have more rights and more protected by the justice system them the victims. FORCE was DIRTY HARRY flipped over with him fighting the vigilante cops. ENFORCER with the feminism/sexism, and IMPACT about Harry pursuing a person out for her own (understandable) revenge, i.e. the victim is Dirty Harry.

   But DEAD POOL is…what? How the press can be dicks? We live in a celebrity-obsessed/desired culture? Those were old hat even by 1988, and earlier movies played that theme much better. Nevermind that the serial killer is Diet SCORPIO, one calorie. No Caffeine.

   And the action finale is dull.

   Maybe Clint was right when he stopped the series. I mean jeez imagine if the original plan had gone through and the shitty THE ROOKIE had been Dirty Harry 6?

2. 

   RRA

   February 4th, 2010 at 11:18 pm

   Vern – Also I’m surprised you didn’t make mention of the killer murdering that Pauline Kael-esque movie critic. I always assumed it was Eastwood (in a bizarre way) getting back at her for her infamous scatching DIRTY HARRY review.

   Of course George Lucas got back at her too at around the same time, so again old hat for fucking DEAD POOL.

3. 

   The Original Paul

   July 7th, 2015 at 8:02 am

   Ok, you guys are nuts. I remember this one being at least enjoyably watchable, and it absolutely is that. Worse than SUDDEN IMPACT? Seriously?

   Advantages that DEAD POOL has over SUDDEN IMPACT: the director of DEAD POOL understands that when something interesting happens in your film, it’s probably a good idea to point a camera at it. Yep, DEAD POOL is an example of competent filmmaking. It also doesn’t feel the need to introduce every non-white character, regardless of intention, with dark threatening music.

   Talking of the music, Lalo Schifrin does a bizarre job with this one. Anybody else notice that the music that plays when Harry fights Gennero’s thugs at the start of the movie would be more suited to watching Superman cart Lex Luthor off to jail or something? And as for the PSYCHO-esque strings when the model car first appears… wow.

   And that model car chase… whoever directed it clearly has a hard-on for shots of cars (big and small) jumping over very large humps in the road in slow motion. Talking of which, are the roads really like that in SF? I’m surprised any car’s suspension lasts more than three months.

   Ok… so the things that don’t work about DEAD POOL are obvious enough, but I’m gonna give a brief rundown of what they are anyway.

   1) Liam Neeson’s character inconsistencies. When the film needs him to be a suspect, he’s a total asshole. Later on, he’s a lot more relatable. It almost feels as though you’re watching two different characters here. Neeson does a great job of selling it, but the script doesn’t quite work.
   2) Look, I freakin’ love all the bizarre touches that this film has. The model car, the random kung-fu, the fantastic Jim Carrey music video, etc. But as awesome as they are, they don’t “fit” very well into a DIRTY HARRY movie.
   3) Sadly, Lalo Schifrin’s score, again. Look, I love Schifrin at his best. This is not Schifrin at his best. Very often he just gets the tone of a scene completely wrong.

   Now here’s the (much longer) list of what I do like about DEAD POOL.

   1) Al Kwan is one of Harry’s more likeable partners. And while I’m not quite sure the film needed a kung-fu battle, I’m not averse to it.
   2) I like the killer’s character more than others it seems. I think he’s more than just “Scorpio-lite”. I like that he never breaks character when he’s impersonating Swan. And his face at the end, when Harry walks out of the mist with the motherfucken harpoon, is just priceless. And talking of which…
   3) The motherfucken harpoon. (Who even leaves one of those things just lying around?!)
   4) The love interest. Patricia Clarkson doesn’t have too much to do here, but she makes the best out of what she’s got. This character and her relationship with Callahan just work for me.

   And most importantly…

   5) Callahan himself. So we all know of Callahan’s contempt for bureaucracy. But this time when he flouts it, it’s not because he’s a fucking asshole. He takes a reporter’s camera because the reporter is harassing a widow. He doesn’t give an old guy a heart attack at his granddaughter’s wedding because he thinks the old guy once killed somebody but can’t prove it. You see the difference here?

   Yeah, if SUDDEN IMPACT shows Callahan at his worst, DEAD POOL shows him at his best. This is a huge, huge improvement.

   I was worried I’d hate this one, but it really does hold up better than I remembered. I knew there were reasons why I liked this film more than the other three sequels when I was younger. It’s not as hard-edged as THE ENFORCER, but I think this actually helps it – and by the way, THE ENFORCER looks about a thousand percent more dated than DEAD POOL does, thanks to all of its old tropes of action movies. Even Vern admitted in his review that it can come across as pretty much a list of action movie cliches. While I do appreciate that it may have invented a lot of said cliches, this definitely affects how you look at the film today.

   I’ve got one more Dirty Harry film to rewatch, and it’s the original DIRTY HARRY. I’m looking forward to this one. Pretty damn sure I loved this film when I was a young’un. Here’s hoping it holds up.

4. 

   Broddie

   June 13th, 2016 at 12:35 pm

   The G’n’R cameos are hilarious in retrospect considering how much Axl Rose has trash talked this movie. The only really fucked up scene to me as a 2016er (but also very reflective of 1988 for better or worse) is Quan needing Harry to respot him after 5 bench reps of what looked like 50 pounds. As if they didn’t already try to find ways to belittle him enough for being a slim and short Asian descented dude.

5. 

   Felicity

   October 26th, 2022 at 1:38 pm

   “The Dead Pool” is my favourite Dirty Harry movie! Maybe it’s just that I’m a 1980s person and it’s the most 1980s one. There’s lots to like in it though, as people have outlined above.

   IIRC the first time I saw “The Dead Pool” was around 1990, when Jim Carrey was just becoming known for “In Living Color.” My friend who looks like Jim Carrey turned to me and said “Hey, it’s that guy from ‘In Living Color,’ the guy everyone says I look like.” Watching “The Dead Pool” in this century, it’s easy enough to get over the fact that it’s soon-to-be star Jim Carrey lip-synching to soon-to-be hit single “Welcome to the Jungle” because the kitschy horror movie set and Jim Carrey’s deliberate over-acting are just perfect for the scene.

   The only thing that looks wrong is his long pointy sideburns. Those are out of style for 1988, like whoever was designing Johnny Squares’s hairstyle and sideburns was an older person who didn’t get the latest update on what cool people looked like in the late 1980s. It’s like they were thinking of giving him Johnny Rotten hair and Lemmy sideburns but then changed their minds and stopped halfway.

   While I’m complaining about hair, Eastwood’s hair had gotten a little too thin and grey for the length it was at in this movie. They either needed to slick it back, give him a wig that looked like his hair in the earlier movies, or cut it shorter like in “Heartbreak Ridge” or “Unforgiven,” which was a more flattering length for the hair he had.

   IMO Peter Swan (Liam Neeson) changes personality partway through because Harry’s preaching actually gets through to him, like he gets through to Samantha Walker (the reporter lady) and Lou Janero (the imprisoned mob boss). Al Quan listens to him about the dangers of being his partner and gets a bulletproof vest, which saves him from being the dead-partner revenge motive. Harry’s a wise man in this movie!

   Your review finally brought closure to me on a scene I never understood. When Ackerman says that teaming Callahan with an Asian-American could be good for the department’s image, Quan looks uncomfortable, the captain facepalms, and Callahan makes fun of Ackerman, and I was never 100% sure what just happened. I didn’t pick up on Ackerman’s comment maybe implying that Quan didn’t deserve the promotion. At the time I took it at face value, like he was saying that, “Oh, by the way, this is also good PR” (which was Ackerman’s job—not a job that’s going to get much respect in an action movie universe, but at least he saved the department from getting sued by the TV station). So, thank you for solving a long-standing mystery for me.

   The remote-control car scene is a great twist on the classic San Francisco downhill car chase in movies [e.g. “Bullitt” (1968)]. There’s a sense that they’re having fun with this trope.

   Al Quan is cool, and I like the nice character-developing/exposition moment where an old man in Chinatown recognises him from when he was a punk teenager. Neatly ties in with how he came to homicide from the gang warfare unit. Evan C. Kim is always good. Re: Broddie’s comment: he didn’t strike me as being too slim; he seemed pretty developed. OTOH, the movie makes sure to tell us that Callahan is in better shape, with Quan not being able to jog as far as him. Hopefully that’s more of a case of Eastwood being vain about his character than him trying to downplay Quan.