LETTERS: Dirty Harry, Genghis Kahn, Mike Myers and Adam Sandler

Falling fast for a cool-headed hero

DIRTY HARRY won my heart in his first few minutes on-screen, when he looked at physical objects, intuited out of his working experience that a bank robbery was in progress, got somebody to call for help and then walked up the street, gun in hand and munching on the remains of a hot dog.

One of the best moments in cop movie history about that rarely favored attribute – coolness of head and sound judgment.

All done in what?

Seven seconds?

No preaching.

But he lost me completely through those unfailingly awful Dirty Harry follow-ups. A little known incident: After the first “Dirty Harry,” two men stuck up a country school in rural Australia at gunpoint, shepherded the teacher and children out into an old van, then left it in the Australian bush while awaiting a ransom.

In the absence of any Dirty Harry, the schoolteacher, a tiny woman later recognized for bravery by Queen Elizabeth, kicked out a panel in the van and led the kids to safety.

Why is this interesting? One of the men’s names was … Eastwood. Evidently a “Dirty Harry” fan. No yellow school buses in the Australian outback.

Paul Lynch

Katoomba, Australia

Genghis Khan, Mongol of action

LEWIS BEALE’S “More Than Just Surviving” [June 1] was superb.

Russian director Sergei Bodrov’s Genghis Khan movie, “Mongol,” has shown us that unlike Alexander the Great, who dreamed of creating a “New World Order” in which East and West would prosper through cooperation, Genghis Khan had a gruff, unsentimental belief in self-reliance. “Two eyes for an eye” could have been his motto.

He believed in action and territory, not ideas or treaties.

Evan Dale Santos

Adelanto

Giving context to Myers’ promo

MIKE MYERS’ promotion of “The Love Guru” on the “American Idol” finals was hilarious. Paul Brownfield’s article on the comic’s new vehicle and career [“Seeing Whose Laughs Lasts,” May 25] doesn’t capture that fun and seems to miss the modern context for the humor. Perhaps he supposes that the guru references hearken back only to boomer hippies and the recently departed Maharishi’s commercial meditation enterprise.

Yet the presence of so many Indians working in America and the emergence of India as a technologically developed country changes the context of the references and the consumer base.

Narrowly focused articles that address only the movie industry business miss the cultural implications and trivialize the products, as if good comedy isn’t an art form worth appreciating.

Susan Self

San Diego

IDISAGREE with Paul Brownfield about “Spanglish.” I don’t think Adam Sandler bombed. This movie amazingly dealt with so many issues in a thoughtful way. Sandler doesn’t understand how good he is in this kind of a part, so he reverts to the silly, snide clown persona.

Brownfield makes the point that the silliness can’t go on forever but doesn’t leave room for [Sandler’s] developing this side.

Tamara Kirkendall

El Segundo