Don Siegel
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As a matter of fact, I daresay the film covers every major aspect of a crime spree such as this one: the effect on the investigators' personal lives, the media coverage ("Dirty Harry" was directly inspired by Zodiac), the nutcases who come out of the woodworks, the copycats, the procession of false leads and near-arrests, the politics, the paperwork, the red tape, and the paranoia.
Toschi was supposedly the inspiration for the characters played by Steve McQueen in "Bullitt" and Clint Eastwood in "Dirty Harry."
As Inspector Dave Toschi, the SFPD detective who has inspired the characters behind three career-making turns (Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, which was loosely based on the Zodiac case, Steve McQueen in Bullitt and Michael Douglas in the TV series The Streets of San Francisco), Mark Ruffalo captures the vocal rasp and gruff energy of a homicide cop with an antithetical jones for kids' snack foods.
Mr. Toschi's unique way of wearing his holster provided the inspiration for Steve McQueen in "Bullitt"; The serial killer Scorpio from the first "Dirty Harry" movie was modeled on Zodiac; Brian Cox's character, Melvin Belli, appeared in the "And the Children Shall Lead" episode of the original "Star Trek" series.
To a point, that’s intentional: Zodiac was never caught, and Fincher aims to creep you out with the lack of closure, with the absence of a Dirty Harry?style climax and windup (Dirty Harry being one of the myriad serial-killer thrillers that drew its inspiration?if…
One of the film�s best scenes is a special screening of Dirty Harry held for the SFPD and just as Fincher shows us the obvious parallel between Zodiac and that film�s villain, he then trusts us with our knowledge of the film and the Zodiac's threats by using only the audio to creepily typify entertainment�s �ripped from the headlines� mentality.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Directed by Philip Kaufman
influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Plot
Don Siegel directed this, the first of four movie versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
The much underrated 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers is still probably the best movie based on Jack Finney's 1955 science fiction novel, The Body Snatchers — but that doesn't make this 1956 version bad, quite the opposite.
Whatever its unfortunate flaws, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS was always worth seeing, because enough of Siegel’s original survives on the screen to make the film a genuinely creepy experience — a horror film not about death and bloodshed but about the loss of personality — the loss of one’s very self — which may in a sense be the ultimate horror, even worse than death: a sort of emotionless, zombie caricature of one’s former existence, drained of everything that gives life joy and meaning.
When they come as thrilling as Don Siegel's 1956 classic , "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", it seems ludicrous to attempt a remake.
There is something for everyone in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Phantom Thread (2017)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced by The Beguiled (1971)
Visuals Themes Plot
Much like Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled, or Chan-wook Park’s The Handmaiden, every small detail feels thoroughly.
(Incidentally, I also noticed a reference to Don Siegel’s 1971 movie “The Beguiled,” in which – as in its 2017 remake by Sofia Coppola – mushrooms become weapons in the war between the sexes.)
Shades of last year’s remake of The Beguiled abound in these sections; suffice to say, you’ll think twice the next time you eat mushrooms.
Al igual que en Happy Together (1997), de Wong Kar-wai, la enfermedad y el cuidado son una herramienta de coerción, mientras que las setas, el más fálico de los alimentos, regresan de ambas versiones de El seductor ( The Beguiled , 1971, 2017) como un veneno y un signo de la toxicidad masculina.
If you prefer screenplay structure, this thread unravels down the stretch, mushrooming into an implausible finish that was better executed months ago by Sofia Coppola in “The Beguiled” (2017).
By walking the line between rebellion and justice, Roundtree paved the way for Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson, who's "Dirty Harry" and "Death Wish" movies respectively owed plenty to "Shaft."
Like "Dirty Harry," Jackson's Shaft is an edgy police officer whose social outrage boils below the surface.
The story's broad outlines are familiar not only from early 1970s black exploitation movies, but also from the early " Dirty Harry " pictures, and when a top cop orders Shaft to get out of his precinct, it's like he's reciting dialogue from the classics.
Like the "Dirty Harry" series of movies by Clint Eastwood, this film walks a tightrope between vigilante vengeance and justice under the law.
The film is a relatively straightforward western drama, a “famous gunslinger’s last rodeo” type adventure not unlike The Shootist and it is quite successful in its respective goals.
“Logan” calls back directly to “ Shane ,” including a scene in which the characters watch the film, but it has more echoes of late-career films for icons such as “ The Shootist ” and “ Unforgiven ” in the way it deconstructs the line between hero and legend.
For this superior followup, Mangold and Jackman turn to the Western; "Shane" is referenced directly, but the violent result is closer to a Sergio Leone revamp of John Wayne's final film, "The Shootist," as an ill, perhaps dying hero, Logan (Jackman), aka the Wolverine (the ex-X-Man with the adamantium claws), is pulled from self-medicated seclusion for a final mission involving his former mentor, Professor X (Patrick Stewart), who is succumbing to a neurodegenerative disorder, and a silent, scary-eyed little girl (transfixing newcomer Dafne Keen), whose own retractable talons and lethal athleticism have made her the target of the usual hunting party of corrupt government/corporate agents.
Hot Fuzz (2007)
Directed by Edgar Wright
influenced by Dirty Harry (1971), Coogan's Bluff (1968)
Themes Visuals Plot
Aside from the obvious nepotism Danny's name might imply, he's also got a rather casual relationship with reality, having informed his police sensibilities with every American Cop Movie from Dirty Harry to Lethal Weapon to Die Hard... but his favorites (and the ones both laughingly paid tribute to and viciously skewered by Hot Fuzz) are Bad Boys II and Point Break.
Whether you are the kind of hard-core action buff who can recount the plot points of “Silent Rage” or “Freebie and the Bean” in obsessive detail or the kind of newbie who has yet to catch up with the likes of “Dirty Harry,” “Hot Fuzz” is the kind of instant classic comedy that will have you smiling for weeks after seeing it.
For example, we have "loner" films like Dirty Harry, we have buddy movies like Lethal Weapon, and we have in-between movies like The French Connection .
I'm talking arming-up montage, "Cobra" sunglasses and toothpick, non-stop cheesy one-liners said in a "Dirty Harry" voice, shoot-outs, car chases, fights, the whole shebang!
The plot is basically Coogan’s Bluff in reverse: an uptight, arrest-happy metropolitan cop Nicholas Angel (Pegg) is promoted to Sergeant, but as part of the deal, he has to relocate from London to the sleepy West Country town of Sandford.
Escape from Pretoria (2020)
Directed by Francis Annan
influenced by Escape from Alcatraz (1979)
Visuals Plot
Daniel Webber and Ian Hart provide admirable support giving the story much needed substance, while director Francis Annan mirrors Don Siegel’s Escape From Alcatraz.
Once they get into their daily prison routine, Escape drops most of its political elements and more closely resembles The Shawshank Redemption , Escape From Alcatraz, or Papillon (whose source novel supposedly inspired the real-life Jenkin to plan his escape), focusing on the careful planning required to pull off the complex breakout.
Payback (1999)
Directed by Brian Helgeland
influenced by Charley Varrick (1973), Dirty Harry (1971)
Themes
Drawing from the same pulp novel as John Boorman's great 1967 "Point Blank," screenwriter Brian Helgeland's intermittently diverting directorial debut is intentionally spun from the same wiry strands as the work of such unpretentious journeymen as Don Siegel (there's even a sly reference to Siegel's "Charley Varrick" in a hotel's name).
And with characters named Carter (a nod to 1971's original Get Carter) and Bronson (a nod to Charles Bronson, the star of many a '70s crime/revenge thriller), references to the Outfit (a nod to John Flynn's 1973 crime-thriller, The Outfit, which is also based on a Westlake novel) and a bar named Varrick's (a nod to Don Siegel's 1973 crime gem Charley Varrick), Payback is a tough, entertaining homage to the kind of gritty '70s crime film that long ago gave way to a slicker yet tamer form of action movie.
Payback is a loose remake of Point Blank, the (overpraised) 1967 John Boorman suspenser, but you could argue that it's really a pulpier Dirty Harry minus the hypocrisy.
Godzilla (2014)
Directed by Gareth Edwards
influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Themes
Like Kevin McCarthy in the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which matched Gojira as a vibrant Cold War parable in sci-fi garb, he is the lone sane man in a world myopic to the truth; his research got him a serious prison term.
The World's End (2013)
Directed by Edgar Wright
influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Themes
Other touchstones include the fiction of John Wyndham (“Village of the Damned,” “The Day of the Triffids”), plus big dollops of “ Invasion of the Body Snatchers ” (both the 1956 and 1978 versions) and a bit of John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” plus many other references, even to chopsocky classics.
Cruise, one assumes, didn’t want to don a cowboy hat and pair up with an ape, so instead would have noted that the middle aged Eastwood was also between Dirty Harry sequels during this problematic period.
Reacher's bigscreen debut opens with a public shooting, a nasty bit of business depicted "Dirty Harry"-style through the scope of the sniper's rifle.
Based on the Lee Childs novel “One Shot,” the story revolves around Jack Reacher’s efforts to solve a crime involving James Barr (Joseph Sikora, a tweaky military-trained sniper accused of taking out a group of civilians — think the opening sequence of “Dirty Harry.”
This surprisingly rated-“PG-13” film on its relatively low $60-million budget is an attempted cross between Tyler Perry’s “Alex Cross,” “Dirty Harry” and – dare I even utter his name?
Dredd was a satiric, sci-fi spin on the impulse that produced the "Dirty Harry" and "Death Wish" movies.
Judge Dredd, a dystopian Dirty Harry, who policed the broken society of the future dispensing swift justice, because you can’t trust the citizenry’s peers when they’re all up to their necks in it, was reimagined as Sylvester Stallone: a cobalt eyed lunk.
It is a moment where the audience are meant to be smiling along with Dredd, we are to delight in the fact (very much in the same way of something like Dirty Harry ) that the law is placed in the hands of one individual and that he’s enacting his own form of justice, which is a fascistic ideology.
Cinephiles will also notice shades of Don Siegel’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956), Michael Bay’s “The Island” (2005) and Charlie McDowell’s “The One I Love” (2014), which fittingly starred Elisabeth Moss (“Mad Men”) in a double role.
There are nods to the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Thriller , which also reflected the preoccupations of their eras, and, more recently, Sorry To Bother You .
It is part of a rich tradition of doppelgänger horror that encompasses works ranging from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) to Sisters (1973) to Enemy (2013).
There are all sorts of shades of gray in this interesting end-of-the-trail Western, which combines the theme about legends and gunfighters with the sad-but-triumphant elegiac tone of "The Shootist," John Wayne's last Western.
Evoking the epic, character-driven, melancholic, detailed procedural structure and tone of Michael Mann’s Heat , the gritty urban racial dynamic of David Ayer’s End of Watch and Dark Blue (as writer) , and the central political orientation of Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry, S. Craig Zahler’s massively ambitious crime drama Dragged Across Concrete is a supremely well crafted piece of genre auteurism.
Only I'd be more prone to describe it as a 70s rather than 80s action film since it's storyline and violence harken back to films like "The Outfit" (1973), "Charley Varrick" (1973), and "The Long Goodbye" (1973).
What emerges is a lean, surprisingly artful programmer, closer in spirit to something like Don Siegel's Riot in Cell Block 11 than to typical boxing fare.
The performance is chilling while Glusman’s creepy eyes and devilish grin recall Andrew Robinson’s “Scorpio” from Don Siegel’s “Dirty Harry”.
And Goggins, channeling Dirty Harry -era Clint Eastwood, brings the right level of IDGAF to his villainous role.
Setting it in 1970s Boston lets Wheatley give Free Fire a grimy, worn vibe, a la Dog Day Afternoon or Dirty Harry .