Dirty Harry: Scorpio (Andy Robinson)

Anonymous User Wrote:
On screen Harry fires 5 shots. There are a couple ambiguous shots that could be his or the bank robbers. After he is done shooting, Harry appears to quickly do something with his gun and maybe put something in his pocket before he looks down to see the blood on his leg. I think he took the sixth bullet out of his gun in order to mess with the bad guys head.

I personally found this to be one of the most disappointing climaxes in cinema history. Don't believe me? Think about it: throughout the whole movie Scorpio works in the shadows and so we're thinking that he's just hiding his true strength and thus will engage in a truly epic climax with Dirty Harry. I'm not talking about the magical, fantasy-land epic; I'm talking about the 2006 version of Casino Royale climax epic (sinking building, nice!). Or perhaps the Alcatraz Island climax epic from The Enforcer. Anyway this one I found particularly disappointing since Scorpio proved to be a coward and ran like Hell rather than actually having the guts to take on Harry. With all that cowardice I do find it kinda hard to believe that he felt lucky.

The drowning catorgory doesn't belong 'here,' either.

I was so glad when he died.

Yes he would have lowered the hammer on a live round, it is safe to do on all modern revolvers, unless he was carrying and old Colt Single Action Army revolver which was unsafe to carry w/ 6 rounds loaded. S&W Model 29, the gun he carried in the film, has what's called a transfer bar. Unless the trigger is pulled -and held- the gun will fire. If the user holds the hammer with the thumb, releases the trigger once the hammer is free to move and lowers the hammer the transfer bar prevents the firing pin from striking the bullet's primer. You can bang the hammer with a rock and that gun will not fire. Otherwise what is he going to do with the gun, you can't carry a revolver cocked. That's called single action and the trigger pull is VERY light. There are two things that would have happened in real life. One he wouldn't have carried that gun. Only Detroit authorized police to carry and issue 44 magnums. SFPD would have issued him a 38 special, police officers can't use whatever gun or caliber they want. Second he'd never be able to cock his gun. Police revolvers were Double Action only, meaning you can't cock it. Cocked, or single action, makes it far too easy for a gun to go off under stress. In the movie Harry only fired 5 times, he lowered the hammer on the 6th so when he turned around and cocked the gun again the cylender rotated past the live 6th round and he dry fired on the first spent shell fired.