I actually do think the 3rd one, with Tyne Daly as his female detective partner, is really good. It has actual character development for Eastwood, but yeah, there is essentially no justification for 4 and 5, they're shoddy cash grabs (though at least 5 is kind of a meta joke, in that Callahan is a celebrity cop trying to solve celebrity murders. But that doesn't make it good.)
I don't think they're all bad films. They're not, & I especially liked Tyne Daly as his partner. I mean, when you look at what happens in "Dirty Harry" & look at that ending, it's pretty clear in my mind he wants out of the game entirely.
Doing "Magnum Force" with Clint, even in SF, would have been fine--provided they renamed the character. (Moving it to L.A., or New Orleans, or somewhere, would have been a good idea, IMO.)
That also might have allowed "Tightrope" to be a sequel--& putting alt-Calahan on
that character arc would have been really interesting.
There's a political rationale for 2, IMO. Magnum Force being an anti-vigilante story was obviously some kind of damage control for the Malpaso Company, WB, and Clint's reputation in general, to make the public realise Dirty Harry wasn't
Joe.
I never got that feeling, myself. Maybe because I hadn't seen "Joe" then... I felt as if Calahan was inside the boundaries of the law,
just, & the issue was obsessiveness more than vigilantism. Contrary to "Death Wish".
Heresy for US gearheads, I know, but... something European. The whole point of the Bullitt character in the first film is he's not an ordinary American cop, he's a San Francisco dick inspired by French thrillers, he has a cool euro-girlfriend, they go to jazz clubs. He wears a turtleneck.
A lefthand drive BMW 3.0 CS or Jensen Interceptor. Both a few years out of production by '77, though plausible choices for a guy who didn't want to go to something like a Corvette to replace the flatback after the first film, but had decided the early seventies Shelby Mustangs were getting too big (and the BWM in particular is a good choice after the first oil shock.) (Apparently McQueen in real life, when not driving old family clunkers he could carry his motorbike gear in, mostly drove Porsches, Ferraris and the like.)
I don't disagree Bullitt had that strain in his personalty. I just think, if you're going to do it, you'd need to have set it up in the first place with him driving a 356 or 911 or something, rather than the Mach 1. You might be able to get at it by seeing the '68 wrecked at the start of the sequel with Bullitt going & buying a new car (& I see that being a used car, myself, given a cop's salary), & then you can examine if he's changed any from '68, & suggest maybe he has by what he buys.
My trouble with Bullitt driving anything but the Mach 1 is the conflict between the cool & the macho. An MGB has the cool factor, but it's not tough enough. The 911, ditto. The '77-'80 Firebird or Camaro isn't cool enough. A '70 or '71 'cuda is a bit
too brutal, but might work... (It's also so
Gibbsesque...
)
If I thought it fit him well enough, I'd contemplate putting him in
The California Kid.
The big gap in his filmography is '74 to '78, and the major thriller he actually was very close to committing to filming in '76 was
William Friedkin's Sorcerer (see the section under casting).
He and Peckinpah collaborating on a Bullitt sequel anytime after '75 is a really good bet for both to have one last critical and commercial hit.
That works for me. Getting Peckinpah on board would be a good call.
Come to think of it, this might be a time to steal one of the "Dirty Harry" sequel scripts...
Most of them would work reasonably well as a "Bullitt" sequel, too, IMO.
