You have to be a real Idiot to take Dirty Harry Movies seriously. Movies are meant to entertain. When you go to a movie you pay your money, avoid the shake down at the snack stand and hopefully enjoy the movie. After it over, you forget about it and go back to your regular life. To sit here and read all these meanings into a movies is just silly. I guarantee you 99% of the people involved in the making of Dirty Harry movies were happy to get a pay check and not part of some right wing conspiracy

This is precisely what I thought reading some of the posts. People who see Dirty Harry as a fascist ploy to smear liberals are really nuts. Do they see everything that comes out of Hollywood as serious political/social discourse?

I'm a big fan of the Bill of Rights, but I still enjoy seeing Dirty Harry blowing away the bad guys. Go figure.

Exactly, I also didn't like this guy's knock on Eastwood. Eastwood has been in some of the most popular movies from the 1960 tell now including Dirty Harry. So he must be doing something right. What has this guy done besides write bad articles.

Actually interpretation of art be it a book, a play, a painting, or yes even a movie has been an active profession and an amateur habit as long as we have recorded such things. To pretend no liberal or conservative sentiments exist in a writers work is foolish.

Yes, the person who wrote DH was clearly of the belief that the criminal element was getting off lightly at the time and that there was a need for a supercop with a hand cannon to rectify the problem. A more liberal minded person of course might have had a boring Erin Brochovitch type file a lawsuit against the city or resort to the comic book hero type like Superman or Batman. The more conservative person prefers that the police be given the right to torture and perform summary executions. Both know this cant be real of course-as you admit, its a movie.

The point is what was the writer trying to say-the plot was including a lot more than shoot to kill scenes-including a criminal getting off on a technicality, hiding easily among the hippies, and basically making a joke out of the system. In real life criminals rarely manage to get off-and of course when they do it makes all the headlines and gets all the attention. The reaction to it was to write a revenge movie of sorts.

Of course in real life, the criminals who get off are generally the rich conservative coat and tie types and usually for serious crimes including serious robbery of millions via various stock crimes-worth million in many cases and affecting many lives-while the idiot who robs a store for 50 bucks winds up in jail for 25 years......

"In real life criminals rarely manage to get off-and of course when they do it makes all the headlines and gets all the attention."

"Of course in real life, the criminals who get off are generally the rich conservative coat and tie types and usually for serious crimes including serious robbery of millions via various stock crimes-worth million in many cases and affecting many lives-while the idiot who robs a store for 50 bucks winds up in jail for 25 years......"

That is a crock of shit. Those are only the statistical outliers that make it into the news.

Thousands of violent criminals get off on technicalities or are handed wrist slaps every day because of our over-worked and poorly performing legal system. We don't see this in the news, because it happens every day. Therefore, it ain't news.

Anyone who gets 25 years for robbing a store was a three time loser who did it with a gun in his hand. That same person is someone that 90% of us would cheer as Dirty Harry "Summarily Executed" him while he was in the commission of his crime.

Actually the system is just as likely to put the wrong guy in jail. The Innocence Project which operates just in case where there is DNA evidence has gotten many innocent people out of jail who went in there because of an aggressive DA and or a jury who just wanted to put someone away because he looked bad or because SOMEONE had to go to jail because of those awful details the DA always fixates on.

I agree that most bad guys do get put away. But the exceptions-those who get out on a technicality and those who get put away for all the wrong reasons are a very exposed minority.

And yes, if you have money-crime is irrellevant and justice can be purchased. Just ask OJ.

I am sure the writer had some point of view when he wrote Dirty Harry, but don't you think movies like Dirty Harry were written with alot of shock value in them so people will go to see them. Just don't shoot the guy, shoot him with a 44 magnum. Put a hole in him the size of a softball. Dirty Harry was made to make a profit not to change are legal system.

It is not just poor people, who go to prison. Martha Stewart has more money then she needs, but she still went to prison. She probably received a stiffer sentence, because she was a celebrity and everyone was paying attention to her case.

You bring up an interesting point. People who are guilty as hell, but get off scot free. I can only think of two off the top of my head. OJ hardly the button down conservative you talk of and the quy who went crazy in the San Fransico Mayor's Office and used the twinkie defence. He also helped launch the hedeous career of Dianne Feinstein may he rot in hell for that