are not enough to make even a passable movie out of 'The Enforcer.'" Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times was positive and called it "the best of the Dirty Harry movies at striking a balance between the action and the humor. Sometimes in the previous films we felt uneasy laughing in between the bloodshed, but this time the movie's more thoughtfully constructed and paced." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two stars out of four and wrote that "the major disappointment in 'The Enforcer' is its disjointed script with its relative absence of thrills." Another criticism he had was that Harry's opponents were now "cartoon idiots" in contrast with the memorable Scorpio from the first Dirty Harry film. Arthur D. Murphy of Variety indicated that the Dirty Harry "format seems to be falling apart at the seams," concluding, "The next project from this particular mold had better shape up or give up." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it "Clint Eastwood's third and arguably best 'Dirty Harry' movie," with "a good cast" and "unprecedented humor" that "results from the film's tonic, highly developed sense of the absurd that runs through its fast-paced mayhem." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote that the film "lacks both the effective gimmicks and the slambang kinetic force of its predecessors. Elements that once generated some melodramatic heat have cooled into inside jokes and aged into venerable wheezes." Janet Maslin stated in Newsweek that "The Enforcer shows very little understanding of the charismatic single-mindedness that made Clint Eastwood's Inspector Harry Callahan such a crowd pleaser in the first place ... each of the two sequels – the first was Magnum Force – has paid less attention to Harry's righteous indignation than to the mayhem he generates. The gore has now become so gratuitous that Harry has begun to look like a trigger-happy fool." Eastwood was named "Worst Actor of the Year" by the Harvard Lampoon, and the film was criticized for its level of violence. Eastwood's performance in the third installment was overshadowed by positive reviews given to Daly as the strong-minded female cop, with which she would follow up a similar role as Det. Mary Beth Lacey in the television series Cagney and Lacey. Daly received rave reviews, with Marjorie Rosen remarking that Malpaso "had invented a heroine of steel" and Jean Hoelscher of The Hollywood Reporter praising Eastwood