Harry Callahan (character) - Biography

Biography

Callahan is an Inspector with the San Francisco Police Department, usually with the Homicide department, although for disciplinary reasons he is occasionally transferred to other less prominent units, such as Personnel (in The Enforcer) or Stakeout (in Magnum Force) or just sent out of town on mundane research assignments (in Sudden Impact). Callahan's primary concern is protecting and avenging the victims of violent crime. Though proficient at apprehending criminals, his methods are often unconventional; while some claim that he is prepared to ignore the law and professional and ethical boundaries, regarding them as needless red tape hampering justice, his methods are usually within the law – he takes advantage of situations that justify his use of deadly force, sometimes almost creating those situations. When a group of men holding hostages in a liquor store in The Enforcer demand a getaway car, Callahan delivers one by driving the car through the store's plate glass window and then shooting the robbers. Rather than following the rules of the police department, Callahan inserts himself into the scene of the event at a time when the imminent use of deadly force by the criminals justifies his use of deadly force against the criminals. Conversely, in Sudden Impact when he finds out that Jennifer Spencer (Sondra Locke), the person responsible for a series of murders in San Francisco and San Paulo, was a rape victim killing her unpunished rapists, he lets her go free, indicating that he feels her retribution was justified.

Callahan went a step further in Dirty Harry: determined to know the location of a 14-year-old girl that serial killer Charles "Scorpio" Davis has kidnapped and tortured, he ignores Scorpio's pleas for a doctor and a lawyer and pressed his foot on Scorpio's wounded leg until he gave up the location. Callahan was later informed by the District Attorney that due to numerous civil rights violations much of the evidence against Scorpio was inadmissible and he would be released without charge. Callahan explains his outlook to the Mayor of San Francisco, who asked how Callahan ascertains that a man he had shot was intending to commit rape; the inspector responds, "When a naked man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcher's knife and a hard-on, I figure he isn't out collecting for the Red Cross."

While his partners and many other officers respect and admire Callahan, others see him as unfit to serve on the police force. He often clashes with superiors who dislike Callahan's methods, and judges and prosecutors are wary of handling his cases because of frequent violations of the Fourth Amendment and other irregularities. A police commissioner admits that Callahan's "unconventional methods ... get results", but adds that his successes are "more costly to the city and this department in terms of publicity and physical destruction than most other men's failures." (The publicity makes him well known; in Sudden Impact, the police chief of another city calls him "the famous Harry Callahan.") Callahan is often reprimanded, suspended, and demoted to minor departments. At the start of Magnum Force Lt. Briggs transfers him to stakeout. In The Enforcer Captain McKay assigns him to personnel. In Sudden Impact he is threatened with a transfer to traffic and being fired, and in The Enforcer he begins a 180-day suspension imposed by McKay. According to film critic Roger Ebert, "it would take an hour in each of these movies to explain why he's not in jail."

The films routinely depict Callahan as being a skilled marksman and strong hand-to-hand combatant. He is a multiple winner of the SFPD's pistol championship. In the five movies, Callahan is shown killing a combined total of 45 criminals, mostly with his trademark revolver, a Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum, which he describes as "the most powerful handgun in the world." He refuses to join the secret police death squad in Magnum Force as he prefers the present system, despite its flaws, to the vigilante alternative. In his fight against criminals, however, including the fellow officers on the death squad, Callahan is merciless and shows no hesitation or remorse at killing them.

In Dirty Harry, several explanations are suggested for his nickname. When his partner Chico Gonzalez asks of its origins, Frank DiGiorgio says that "that's one thing about our Harry; doesn't play any favorites. Harry hates everybody: Limeys, Micks, Hebes, Fat Dagos, Niggers, Honkies, Chinks, you name it." After being called to talk down a jumper, Callahan states he is known as Dirty Harry because he is assigned to "every dirty job that comes along." When Harry is ordered to deliver ransom money to Scorpio, Gonzalez opines "no wonder they call him Dirty Harry; always gets the shit end of the stick."

The movies reveal little about Callahan's personal background. In the first film, Callahan tells his partner's wife that his wife was killed by a drunk driver. She appears in Magnum Force in an old photograph which Harry turns around. The doctor tending to him after the first film's bank robbery intimates that "us Potrero Hill boys gotta stick together." The first film's novelization explains that Callahan grew up in this neighborhood and describes a hostile relationship between the police and the residents. Callahan recalls once throwing a brick at a cop, who picked it up and threw it back at him. The following sequels show that Harry lives within the city limits in a small studio apartment on Jackson St. in the Nob Hill area. In Magnum Force Harry's friend Charlie McCoy says "We should have done our 20 in the Marines", indicating that they served (or could/should have served) together in the armed forces. In The Dead Pool, a coffee mug on Harry's desk at the police station bears the United States Marine Corps seal.