Presentation script

Speaker: the anti hero. as rick Altman in Film/genre  said that the definition is someone who "bucks authority" (item 4) and no one portrays this idea better than the Legend Clint Eastwood. now Eastwood has exclusively portrayed the anti hero and in fact has almost set the standard for today's hero. by the way, spoilers ahead....just saying. starting with one of his most famous scenes films "Dirty Harry" (source 1) in which Eastwood portrays a San Francisco cop searching for an Insane killer and it starts to show his way down a dark path which almost points towards Callahan being as bad a character as the movies villain.

Scene: The bank robbery scene (00:11:00-00:15:00)(item 1)

Speaker: you can see from this scene that Callahan opens fire in the middle of a crowded street to stop bank robbers in the middle of the day rather than wait for back up, which he was perfectly happy to do until the gun is fired, and then when asked if he has run out of bullets he points his gun at the unarmed injured criminal and pulls the trigger, whether he knows if the gun was loaded or not he would have happily out right murdered the criminal without a second thought and while you may believe that the criminal deserved to be killed as he is a criminal however he is often reprimanded throughout the film for not following correct procedure.

Scene: the jumper scene (00:30:50-00:33:03)(Item 1)

Speaker:  Now this scene shows Harry to stop a potential suicide not by talking him down but by telling him about the "mess it would make on the sidewalk and how bad it would make him look in front of his captain" and then when the jumper attempts to fall Callahan knocks him out and simply carries him down to the ground. now even though this entire scene is literally showing harry tot be doing a good thing, that is saving a life, he literally assaults the guy  which is obviously a bad way to do it as the guy can literally seen to be hanging from the lift on the way dow which is not safe as the guy could have fell at any point anyway and so he does bad to achieve his goals and that perhaps the anti hero view, doing good with the guise of bad.

Scene: Football stadium Scene (01:08:30-01:10:24)(item 1)

Speaker: Callahan shoots a suspect in the leg before promptly torturing him for information on the location of a kidnap victim which for obvious reasons is very far from the actions of a hero however his intentions are good in that the victim is slowly suffocating and he needs to find her. The criminals screams can obviously be heard for a long time while the shot slowly zooms out. now this really has some moments that obviously are bad while also being semi good, for instance Callahan shoots the guy in the leg even after he has stopped due to Callahan's previous shouted order and the suspect is completely un armed which Callahan can obviously see which means that knowing that that the suspect is surrendering and that he is unarmed harry still shoots him, granted its in the leg which isn't as bas as killing the guy straight up however Callahan did need something from him namely the dying girl which begs the question, Would Callahan have straight off killed the suspect if he hadn't have been looking to save the girl?

Scene: Final showdown scene (01:38:40-01:41:31)(item 1)

Speaker: Finally Callahan fires at the main villain while he's holding a young child as a human child and the bullet hits the criminal only a few centimeters from where the child's head is.
all of this points towards the general attitude of this supposed hero that constantly breaks or bends the rules in order to get his job done and even goes as far as to symbolically throws away his detective badge at the end of the film which implies that he has given up on the law being the way to stop the criminal element and instead he needs to take it personal.

documentary: Dirty Harrys way (item 8)

Speaker: this documentary touches on a couple of the used scenes and leaves some impressive quotes that could add to the ideas of the character such as the robbery scene it is said that Callahan "scarcely has to interrupt his lunch to gun down a trio of thugs" (item 8)which implies to me that its trying to show that Callahan barely thinks anything more of killing three people is something he doesn't care about however it also shows a new side to the final scene when Callahan shoots the suspect while he's holding a child however this documentary points out that he hesitates rather that straight up shooting and this show that he is wrestling with the decision that he later follows through with the plan to shoot the suspect and this is perhaps a way of showing that Callahan does have a good side as he doesn't risk the child as much as he could have done but instead lowers his gun so that the suspect (with a gun to the childs head) does lower his guard which means the child is in less danger yet still a concern and so harry then takes down the suspect at a risk to the child which to me does lean closer to hero as he ceases to lose his "personal approach" (item 8) and begins to worry about innocent victims, which could be overlapped with the torture scene as he also does something along these lines when he tortures the suspect about the girl as he takes a second of thought time  which means he's trying to think of a way to get the information out of the suspect and settles on the torture method as its quicker and more effective than any other method and time is of the essence and so it does show heavily that Callahan is a hero whose concerned with the lives of the citizens he is trying to protect however he has very little empathy for criminals and will gladly sink to  heir level to rid the city of them, which, as this documentary says, kind of like Callahan with the old gangster cops who would "keep the law with a machine gun"(item 8)

Speaker: in support of this is one of Eastwood's earlier films that he literally plays the Good as in "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" (source 2)
while this film doesn't have as much of a focus on the anti hero character however Eastwood portrayal of Blondie/The Man With No Name as the titular Good is far from that. this film again having its moments that again show Eastwood's character to be far from good as he frequently is shown to do several things that indicate that his character has never been good but instead is classed as the good when compared to the rest of the titular characters as he  is seen to take criminals which have been convicted of "arson, murder and rape" turning them in for the bounty money on them and then rescuing them so that he can turn them in again for the money somewhere else and this is implied that he lets them go every so often so that they can commit more crimes as between the first and second time we see him do this the list of crimes that is read out for Tuco "The Ugly" has almost doubled in size and so this the hero of this film starts to seem like a bad guy as much as a good guy as he literally seems more like a mercenary who does what he does for the money ands own personal advancement which isn't really a trait of a good guy.

however he does maintain the good guy status as he acts in many sections to save a lot of lives such as when he blows up a bridge so that he can save thousands of lives in the american civil war, however this too could have negative effects as the captain in this scene states that "its a court martial offence to even dream of destroying that bridge" (item 2) and so its safe to assume that that stands for the south side as well which further means that when the soldiers return they could all face a court martial and potentially face death anyway and so its again potentially only for the gain of him. flipping it again it also grants a dying mans last dream so it could be another sign of goodness in him.

also theres an emotional scene where he comforts a dying soldier in his final moments and even being the one to murder the sadistic Angel Eyes "The Bad" however this too is marred by the fact that Blondie has removed the bullets from Tucos gun which could have got him killed especially when you consider that there was a 50/50 chance between angel eyes shooting him or blondie. this is backed up by Seeing Is Believing by Peter Biskind (item 5) which sates that Eastwood's characters "showed audiences that you could shoot first or shoot someone in the back and still be the hero" and this does happen in that final duel as well as a couple of other moments in the film where he shoots first such as when Angel eyes's goons turned up and Blondie simply shoots one of them before even opening his eyes and when Angel eyes summons them out of hiding Blondie doesn't even seemed surprised which to me heavily implies that he knew exactly who the mender and why they were there and still shoots them and then later when he kills another one of them before they even can draw there own weapon and just like in Dirty Harry he takes a second to think which again makes me believe that he openly considers what to do with the technically un-armed man and to me where a hero would perhaps render the man unconscious and disarm him Blondie besides on straight up murder.

then Blondie makes him stand with a noose around his neck before riding off as if to leave him his fate before returning to shoot him down and making a joke about it, obviously this isn't the side to a hero as had literally anything gone wrong Tuco would have been hung brutally.

this does add up to make the character an anti hero however this one seems to heavily point towards the anti rather than the hero and that could in fact be true, if it wasn't for the moments of kindness or heroism this character could be seen as the villain or more likely simply a mercenary that only does good because it benefits him in some way as regularly seen in the film.

Speaker: a final film comparison of this idea is Eastwood's role as Gunny Sergeant Tom Highway in "Heartbreak Ridge"(item 3) and i found this role really plays to the idea as an anti hero as Highway is a man that is sent to train "a bunch of losers and malcontents"(Item14) during the Vietnam war which points towards the idea that Highway is the hero of the film as he is literally training these men not to be killed as all they have been used for up to the point where Highway turns up is to lose in "a distinct grotesque military manner"(item 3) to the other unit on base during training exercises and he does succeed in saving all but one of them during the final scene when they are deployed however throughout the training Highway constantly beats some of the men especially when they attempt to get rid of him during the film as well as opening fire on them during training exercises and again the bullets hit just a few feet away from the men. Also just like the Harry Callahan character he has a constant problem with authority completely insulting them to their faces as well as beating them and disobeying direct orders during one scene where the soldiers inform Highway that they are supposed to lose. the film also starts with Highway in a jail cell which obviously implies heavily that he's used to being in a cell due to his relaxed look however he also looks to be a tough respected character as he's the centre of attention to all but one of the inmates and to me this implies that he's again so used to this that he simply starts telling stories and even smoking a cigar, beating another man which obviously a good guy wouldn't do straight up, and then finally being told that he has a long list of minor felonies including "urinating on a police vehicle"(item 3)

Speaker: these roles show Eastwood's base line for every movie he does in some way in that all have their bad sides as each character has their down sides whether it be disregard for authority or a disregard for human life .