The second
Dirty Harry movie, Magnum Force concerns itself with a vigilante group that has targeted notorious scofflaws for extermination. When a prominent gang boss or drug-runner is set free by the airheaded liberal courts, a covert group of "avengers" is soon on hand to blow the miscreant to bits. While detective Dirty Harry Callahan (
Clint Eastwood) is no great friend of civil liberties, he is dead set against wholesale murder as a solution to legal loopholes. Discovering that all the killings have been committed by a .357 Magnum (you remember Eastwood's paean to this weapon in the original film), Callahan suspects that his on-the-edge partner, Charlie McCoy (
Mitchell Ryan), is responsible. But the answer is less transparent than that, as Harry learns almost at the cost of his own life. Co-scripted by
John Milius and
Michael Cimino, Magnum Force was followed by another
Dirty Harry installment,
The Enforcer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide