Scaled Down

The new Dirty Harry sequel surely takes a dim view of the local TV news biz: “The Dead Pool” portrays reporters as obnoxious, ambitious, superficial geeks. But there’s also an homage-- so to speak--to KABC-TV’s Gary Franklin and his rating scale when Harry’s partner, investigating the murder of a TV movie critic, quips, “On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being best, I’d give this murder an 8.”

So how did Franklin scale the pic?

“Terribly written. . . . There’s a lot of bashing of TV news people, well-deserved in this case because the actress playing the TV reporter is so awful.”

He ended up grading the film on a curve: “For ‘Dirty Harry’ fans, it gets a 10. For those of us who are sane, it gets a 6--at best, averaging out to an 8.”