After Thoughts...Kiss Me Deadly [1955] (no spoilers)

THE BALLAD OF MIKE HAMMER

Few times in my movie-viewing ventures have I come across a name so apt to a character's persona than with Mike Hammer.  Sure, Iceman and Maverick go without saying, but nicknames don’t count.  When a name is given in response to someone's attributes, that's too easy.  The name Hammer is no nickname, but rather a surname passed down through generations that was bestowed upon this man after a long line of men before him- maybe not, but I surely like to think it was this dramatic.  And if this was a real story and Mike Hammer was actually a real person, conceived of flesh in our world, the above statements would actually matter some, but given the fact that Mike Hammer and his entire surrounding existence was built through a means of creative fiction, none of that really matters.  However, in my experience watching Kiss Me Deadly, I could not get the idea out of my head.  And the more I watched, the more it was true.  Mike Hammer is Mike Hammer

Classic noir detectives like Philip Marlowe (The BigSleep) and Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon) would be in for a rude awakening if Mike Hammer ever joined their department.  A burly dude to say the least, Mike Hammer probably invented the knock-heads-first-then-ask-question approach to interrogation.  Messy and slightly unprofessional, but it works nonetheless.  If only he and Harry Callahan were born of the same universe, the streets of San Francisco would have been clean in no time, not to mention we would have had a terrific motion picture on our hands.

Dirty Harry with his .44 magnum side kick and “Do I feel lucky?” staple is a terrifically fearing and bad ass cop.  Mike Hammer is not. He is bouldering and clumsy.  At one point, he finds a way to combat a switchblade using a bag of popcorn.  I definitely would not call that bad ass, or even cool, but it works nonetheless.  For the most part though, the Hammer just relies on his fists and gets the job done fine.  Like all noir-set detectives, or any detective for that matter, their job calls for dealing with the most unpleasant and ruthless criminals on a daily basis.  Brain or brawn as the old saying goes, and Mike Hammer made his decision.

Why See This...Dirty Harry [1971]

      The job of a sniper requires hours of reclusive sitting; waiting for a target to come across the scope.  In most cases, a sniper doesn’t chase his or her target; the target comes to them.  It’s a lonely job that doesn’t demand much more than a man and a gun.  Sure, nowadays equipped with radio sets and GPS trackers, they can do a lot more, but before all that, it was just a man and a gun.  It makes sense why Scorpio (Andrew Robinson), the sadistic serial killer in Dirty Harry, is a sniper.  Scorpio’s not given much back story in Dirty Harry, but he’s a definite loner.  He works as a groundskeeper at a nearby stadium, where he lives alone, in a decrepit room beneath the stands, probably no bigger than a closet.  We also know that he kills, for the fun of it.

      In a very different way, Police Officer Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) is a loner too.  His wife died many years ago, leaving him to live alone.  When the department assigns him a partner to work with to catch Scorpio, he informs the guy that every partner he’s had has been shot or worse, killed.  Callahan’s character resembles that certain type of gun-slinging, “my way or the highway” Western sheriff persona that Eastwood became so synonymous with during the ‘60s.