There was a time (before Dirty Harry?) when cops in movies embodied benevolent protectiveness and sincere desire to "serve and protect". Since then they seem to embody a hunt-and-kill sport. A sort of live FPS video game playing subculture.
What the hell happened? Drug war?
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Check out old TV series Dragnet.
Dirty Harry was a reaction against both the prevailing “limousine liberalism” soft in crime views of the late 60’s/early 70’s and the skyrocketing crime rates, esp. murder in the same period. The movie sparked outrage at the time
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Yes. You have to understand then that the WWII generation was seeing their world going to hell - defeat in Vietnam, Watergate, inflation, gas crisis, riots, serial killers (Speck, Gacy, Son of Sam) and near 2000 murders s year in NYC alone
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Curiously the Arizona shooting feels like a real life "do you feel lucky punk" situation except the cop actually shoots.
The Dirty Harry iconic scene actually models some restraint.

