The 7 Best Clint Eastwood Cop Thrillers That Aren’t 'Dirty Harry'

Clint Eastwood will forever be recognized worldwide for his charismatic portrayal of San Francisco Inspector Harry Callahan in 1971’s Dirty Harry. Spawning four sequels that lasted through the end of the ‘80s, the legendary actor and director made a powerful mark on the cop genre of cinema with his scowling catchphrases while wielding a .44 Magnum against the scum of the Bay Area. As career-defining as Dirty Harry was, however, Eastwood’s law enforcement roles outside his SFPD gunslinger proved to be far more compelling in characterization.

Eastwood’s seven best non-Dirty Harry cop thriller performances range from detectives carrying the familiar traits of the star’s persona to deeply haunted lawmen struggling to solve violent crimes. The list does not include director-only works, such as Mystic River, or comedic fare, like City Heat. It’s Eastwood doing what he does best in some unexpected ways.

7 ‘The Rookie’

Detective Nick Pulovski

Aging out of his Dirty Harry character by 1990, Eastwood took the rare step of sharing the leading man slot next to Charlie Sheen, who was riding high off the success of Platoon and Wall Street. Capitalizing on the buddy cop craze sparked by 48 HRS. and Lethal Weapon, The Rookie stars the iconic actor as LAPD cop Nick Pulovski, who gets assigned the inexperienced detective David Ackerman (Sheen). Together, they pursue a ring of vicious car thieves led by the sociopathic Strom (Raul Julia), responsible for the murder of Pulovski’s partner.

At times, The Rookie takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to Eastwood’s cop thriller formula with its over-the-top performances, impressive stunt work, and offbeat one-liners. But his depiction of Pulovski is not as measured as Harry Callahan's. He’s a world-weary veteran losing his touch in a youth-oriented police department while losing a step or two on the beat. Sheen’s Ackerman not only gives Pulovski someone to instill wisdom in but also finds courage through the aging cop’s survival instincts. Despite Eastwood and Sheen’s pairing having the potential to appeal to a young crowd, The Rookie lost out to Home Alone at the holiday box office in 1990 and became one of the star’s worst-reviewed movies at 31% on Rotten Tomatoes.

6 ‘Blood Work’

Agent Terry McCaleb

Based on Michael Connelly’s 1997 novel, Blood Work sees Eastwood lean into a lawman confronting mortality both externally and internally. He plays federal agent Terry McCaleb, an expert in criminal profiling who suffers a heart attack while pursuing the mysterious “Code Killer”. Following a heart transplant, McCaleb retires from the FBI until two years pass, when he learns that his heart belongs to one of the killer’s victims, prompting the agent to take matters into his own hands.

Surrounded by acting legends such as Angelica Huston and Jeff Daniels, Eastwood dials back the supercop charisma to play an age-appropriate cop dealing with survivor’s guilt in more ways than one. He has recurring nightmares of the killer from the victim’s point of view and reacts in paranoid fashion when he mistakes a bystander wearing shoes matching those of his suspect. What McCaleb loses physically, he makes up for with his sharp instincts, which proves that Eastwood refuses to be sidelined in favor of the young stars of the new millennium.

5 ‘A Perfect World’

Chief “Red” Garnett

In a completely different type of cop role, Eastwood does not fully drive the narrative of 1993’s A Perfect World. Here, the director and actor take second billing to Kevin Costner by playing Texas Ranger Red Garnett, who pursues the future Yellowstone star’s prison escapee Butch Hayes across the Lone Star state in 1963. Much of A Perfect World’s melodrama is centered around Butch abducting a young boy named Buzz (T.J. Lowther) and their unlikely budding relationship while on the run from the authorities.

A Perfect World subverts the black-and-white depiction of cops and robbers. Instead of playing a gunslinger or a cop obsessed with getting his man, Eastwood’s Garnett is the last of a dying breed of law enforcement. Though he has an obligation to bring Butch in, Garnett subtly questions the rules he obeys once challenged by the empathetic criminologist Sally Gerber (Laura Dern). For a man used to playing heroes who shot first and asked questions later, Eastwood takes a gentler approach to the usually aggressive cop persona, where even the devastating effects of taking someone’s life make him feel more lost than believing justice is served.

4 ‘Coogan’s Bluff’

Walt Coogan

Eastwood’s first collaboration with Dirty Harry director Don Siegel came in this fish-out-of-water crime thriller set in late ‘60s New York City. Coogan’s Bluff sees Eastwood bring his established Western persona to the modern era, playing an Arizona deputy sheriff assigned to extradite a killer (Don Stroud) from the Big Apple, only to lose him in an ambush. Now, Coogan has to navigate the city’s counter-culture scene to find his man.

Coogan’s Bluff proved that Eastwood could stretch beyond The Man with No Name from Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars trilogy. With New York depicted as a living nightmare against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, Coogan represented an old-school way of authority that clashed culturally with the blurred lines of policing the urban jungle. He’s essentially Dirty Harry without the gun. But he can withstand everything from pool hall hustlers to LSD-ridden hippies.

3 ‘The Gauntlet’

Ben Shockley

OKAt a time when Hollywood spectacle ruled the day with Jaws and Star Wars, 1977's The Gauntlet saw Eastwood face his biggest test to date. A road thriller stretching from Las Vegas to Phoenix, the film follows Ben Shockley (Eastwood), an alcoholic Phoenix cop initially assigned to extradite sex worker Gus Mally (Sondra Locke) out of Sin City to testify against the mob. But the assignment turns out to be a death trap when the loser cop and escort become fugitives hunted by the authorities and corrupt bureaucrats. On the wrong side of the law, to do the right thing, Shockley has to blast through a gauntlet of highly armed cops back to Phoenix to get Mally to court.

Eastwood rarely ever played a character at the lower end of life prior to The Gauntlet. His characters often stand tall against the system, whether he wears a badge or not. Unlike Dirty Harry, who had a victim’s rights code against an establishment that does more to protect the offender, Shockley couldn't care less about a code. He would rather drink and play poker than do his job. Yet deep down, he’s been waiting for the one big case to make his career after years of being sidelined by the force. For once in his career, Eastwood is portrayed as a full underdog battling the odds.

2 ‘Tightrope’

Detective Wes Block

Out of any movie he ever starred in, Eastwood was at his darkest and sleaziest in 1984’s Tightrope. The New Orleans-set erotic thriller follows homicide detective Wes Block (Eastwood) sharing custody of his two daughters (Allison Eastwood and Jenny Beck) when he’s called in to investigate a series of murders involving ladies of the night getting stalked and assaulted by a male assailant, occasionally leaving few traces of evidence behind. As Block navigates the dive bars and brothels of New Orleans to find the killer, he engages in sexual activities with the ladies of the night, questioning his own identity in the case.

Eastwood allows himself to be totally vulnerable in Block’s kinky liaisons with the various prostitutes he encounters. He has been exposed to so many sex-related crimes that it destroyed his marriage, forcing him to become a present father in his girls’ lives. The addition of Eastwood’s real-life daughter, Allison, allows the icon to soften his masculine persona for many of Tightrope’s moments of levity, including a funny moment when he has to explain to the girls about a stimulating catchphrase. Block’s children are Tightrope’s dramatic irony by Eastwood juxtaposing parental life with the low-class life on the street.

1 ‘In the Line of Fire’

Agent Frank Horrigan

If Unforgiven was his farewell to the Western genre he helped to innovate, In the Line of Fire works as a very subtle finale for Eastwood’s Dirty Harry persona without playing the iconic character. Haunted by his failure to stop the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy in 1963, Secret Service Agent Frank Horrigan (Eastwood) becomes the target of Mitch “Booth” Leary (John Malkovich), who plays a twisted game with the agent while plotting to assassinate the current President during the re-election campaign. The phone call from Booth causes Horrigan to resume his duties to the Presidential Protective Division, where he must travel on the campaign as he pursues the assassin alongside his partner Al (Dylan McDermott) and Agent Lilly Raines (Rene Russo).

Eastwood was 62 years old at the time of In the Line of Fire’s production. The legendary actor was still game for the action scenes where he had to chase after Malkovich, as well as the film’s Dirty Harry-esque opening with Eastwood using a large revolver to blast thugs on a boat holding his colleague hostage. Additionally, In the Line of Fire features Eastwood’s rare willingness to show vulnerability in an action picture. Horrigan is haunted by his failures in the Secret Service to the extent of losing his family to his alcoholism. It makes the character constantly second-guess himself, which was a trait Eastwood’s fans would likely not expect.