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Street crime was a huge issue in 1971. Dirty Harry was far from the only fictional vigilante, and he wasn't even the first. Harry wasn't even the best; Charles Bronson's character in his Death Wish series was a more vicious vigilante, and he didn't even need a trick gun.
I always saw the Dirty Harry character as the fulfillment of a fantasy that Americans have about killing the "bad guys."
Unfortunately, he makes it look too easy. In reality, if you run around with a Billy Badass attitude combined with a hero complex, YOU'RE the one that's gonna end up getting clipped.
If Dirty Harry was suffering from schizophrenia in Magnum Force that would explain this scene with a sexy Japanese girl in his apartment building(who is immediately willing to jump into bed for a no-strings attached hookup until he's c**k-blocked by his police captain)as possibly just being a hallucination in Harry's mind. On the other hand though, it was the 70s...
Street crime was a huge issue in 1971. Dirty Harry was far from the only fictional vigilante, and he wasn't even the first. Harry wasn't even the best; Charles Bronson's character in his Death Wish series was a more vicious vigilante, and he didn't even need a trick gun.
Thing is, street crime in '71 was a joke comparatively. Especially in San Francisco, where the franchise was set.
But Americans always think crime is worse than it actually is.
The first Dirty Harry movie was all about going outside the law or at least pushing the envelope, the means justified the end, criminal rights were not important, they don't need to have their rights respected and only use their rights to further break the law, in Magnum force when other cops used this same ideology then DH is out to get them. I think who ever wrote that stuff was a bit schizo or two very different writers. LOL. Just saying.
I don't think most of us really care one way or the other. It was a movie for heavens sake, that is the end of it!!!!
Is the OP aware that Harry Callahan is a fictional character? And that if the creator of that fictional character did not give his/her creation a mental illness, then that character did not have a mental illness?
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