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Harry Callahan: Where’s the girl?
The Killer: You tried to kill me!
Harry Callahan: If I tried to do that your head would be splattered all over this field - now where’s the girl?

As we move from the opening telescopic view of a psychopath killer eyeing a PYT bathing in the rooftop sun set against a brilliantly sparse, sexed-up Lalo Schifrin jazz, blood slowly brings in the elements of crime so smoothly in the City by the Bay perfection and serenity. In enters an iconic cop, call him a detective if you will, the frame and moment he enters you know he will satisfy all theories of ‘exception’ that you know of in context of cinema. Adding the much needed spice to a 70’s classic narrative, set-piece grandeur, Inspector Harry Callahan walks the sun like he is gracing the moon bathed coastline of North Beach, his cool coefficient doesn’t need Aviator shades, he doesn’t need abuses like my beloved QT. Well obviously you can’t go without an archaic bureaucracy, straight from the Hitchcockian sub-cast, contemplating over the civic life gone awry in times of loose-cannon, hammer-headed perverts, or psychopath killers as unimaginatively titled as ‘Scorpio Killer’ well, time of throw backs start…

A Back to the Future (BTTF) trip takes over, throw-backs to the cinema of the 21st century in a 70’s cult classic. Zodiac Killer takes the title of Scorpio Killer. Scorpio, zodiac, whatever…
Inspector Callahan makes sure he fucks the mayor’s high-handedness with his I-don’t-give-a-fuck in the-San-Francisco-deadbeat air-to your social-and-political-inclinations attitude. He shoots from the lip and makes up for the lack of words with an unclassifiable stare (deep with a God-only-knows-what-could-cause-that intensity).
“an adult male is chasing……

To add to Scorpio/Zodiac Killer, you even have a Travis Bickle slow pullin’ car down the low lyin’ city streets full of the much needed angst-for-maximum-impact-on-celluloid. Poor Callahan just got half a burger of rest and an exact two-and-a-half-lines of screen glory….
“I know what you are thinking…..
All the times with varying intensity of blinking that now classic stone cowboy eye.
He is the quintessential 90’s Reid & Taylor Man in the 70’s. If there ever was a potential plug possible in cinema, it is THIS!

It even has a negative-35-years-back answer to the lame-ass “Do you want a partner” asked from times in the future gone down the drain.
No wonder you talk about time capsules and space-out syrups of chronological significance.
There is even a disregard of education and how it ruins a bad cop with good intentions.
Oh! How he hates everybody! Now could you do any better at wannabe-ing a future QT!
In enters Scorpio like a breath of stale air in the quietude, in the serene ambience of a church tower chapel bells on a windy afternoon from another BTTF Notting Hill comfort. The kind of comfort you feel when your hair fly and you don’t mind it at all if you were to go bald in this breezy onslaught of Mother Nature.

Now Scorpio is so Pulp Fiction you often wonder how many Big Kahunas he devoured that morning of on-screen debut. I am even thrown back to the Matt-Trey South Park trips of Big ‘Gay in 21st Century and First Season of SP’ Al. There is even an ancestral Munna who disturbs the quiet sleepin’ in the quiet suburbian innocence, in a peepin-tom-dick-Harry avatar. The only thing you don’t have here is a song. Kya karein kya na karein….

For regional and geographical diversity, there is a freewheelin’ Prabhu ‘jinko main zulfein kahoon unko kahein wo baal’ Deva from a bad-in-Tamil-worse-in-Hindi (not my thoughts) Minsara Kanavu, talking his way into preventing a suicide casualty scared to death on the prospects of turning to pulp. Fiction for sure!. You can place your bets now when I say “The Contesht is Open!”
“every dirty job that comes down the way….

Welcome to Homicide….
And welcome to the ‘JARHEAD’ Suck!

0.44 Magnum, ‘All I can get’ surveillance. Putting a bait-Ghost and the Darkness
my partner sucks-Main Khiladi Tu Anadi
Dirty Harry takes his title a tad too seriously when he turns Mickey ‘I-peep-into-your-bedroom-secrets-using-utraslick-gadgetry-as-long-as-Sharon-stone-gives-me-a-fuck’ Rourke when he mouths.
“You owe it to yourself to live a little, Harry” I wonder what would Daniel Radcliffe say to that!

A true censor board Aaj Tak moment to be talked about in talk shows later quality.
There is just another SP reference, “SOAB took the bait”…”They killed KENNY!! Those bastards!”

Gadget hunting a la Tomorrow Never Dies. “aapse kaun paise lega saaheb”

Whats’ in the bag moment(Marsellus Wallace).
“Hey I got a ‘my fiends call me Alice dare, if you are a vice, I ll kill you. Well do it at home!”
‘the girl dies’ …..dead nigger storage….

Scorpio uncle also shows a Fight Club masochism
Akayla , the villain becomes bhola like bhandari…
Guy Ritchie-Go-Strip ‘haath lagaya to waat laga doonga’ Bars.

“This one’s on the house!”

‘I am the villain, I can crash whiskey bottles on sloppy bar shop owners who are almost prepared to see it coming.
I can abduct a busload of school kids, I can have my Pinky moments and make shit scared faces sing nursery rhymes in the most uninterested tone.

Dirty Harry also happens to live a Manoj Bajpai in his ‘get yourself another delivery boy’ coldness.

And a not right to treat children that way’ Daud minus Tarzan villain gets scared of unarmed Hero….so much for anti-heroisms.

A good six seconds pause before Scorpio takes the .44 Magnum Pill, the repeated to death two and a half lines that go down history before the star studded badge goes down the scum just like all crimes do, even in face of rising angst amongst the very system that gets has pledged to swipe it out of the society. Phew!

I know what you’re thinking. “Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

This is the birth of the angry young single ‘I-don’t-mind-casual-sex-if-it-comes-unannounced-and-unattached’ cop.

As real and as dirty as it could get!