Dirty Harry/YMMV

""I was telling the story of a hard-nosed cop and a dangerous killer. What my liberal friends did not grasp was that the cop is almost as evil, in his way, as the sniper.""
 * Anti-Hero: Dirty Harry himself, though YMMV on whether he belongs in type 3 or 4. From the words of Don Siegel himself:


 * Complete Monster: The Scorpio Killer, so much so that the actor who played him (Andrew Robinson) reportedly received death threats after the movie came out.
 * Honorable mention goes to Mick from Sudden Impact, who seems to enjoy hurting others too damn much to pass for human, and the pimp from Magnum Force, whose brutal killing of one of his hookers inspired the stomach-turning Real Life "Hi-Fi Murders."
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome: When Harry finally kills Scorpio, ending his rampage.
 * Crowning Moment of Funny: The candidates for detective evaluation scene in The Enforcer.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: The Magnum Force title theme, which was remixed into Team Fortress 2's "Meet the Sniper" video soundtrack.
 * Draco in Leather Pants: Averted in Magnum Force, John Milius might have suspected the audience could sympathize with the vigilante cops for doing away from some genuinely deserving scumbags, so he threw in a few scenes of them murdering female hangers-on and an innocent fellow policeman to keep that from happening. It also keeps Lt. Briggs from having a Straw Man Has a Point moment when he tries to defend their actions later (since no, they didn't all deserve it).
 * Memetic Mutation: See the first page quote.
 * Narm: The Dirty Harry franchise has had its unintentionally funny moments:
 * The torture scene described as "downright horrific" on the main page can just as easily be seen as a tad silly due to Scorpy's hysterical, overdone blubbering. Also, his scream when stabbed is hilarious.
 * In an early scene in The Enforcer, when a criminal gang demands a getaway car, Harry gets in his squad car and rams the shop front where the criminals are holed up, taking them utterly off guard. In a later scene, Harry is chasing an assassin on foot across rooftops, who accidentally falls through a roof window - right into a porn film shoot. Harry also uses a toilet plunger on an underworld figure's face to extract information from him.
 * In The Dead Pool, the celebrity killer attempts to blow up Harry Callahan's car with a modified RC car infused with C4. However, the attempt fails when some kid playing with his own RC car interferes with the bomb-car's radio frequency. Instead of waiting for another opportunity, the killer starts a downright hilarious RC car chase across San Francisco.
 * Retroactive Recognition: Camryn Manheim is the girl behind Harry in the elevator when he threatens that punk in Sudden Impact.
 * Sequelitis: General consensus seems to be that each film is successively worse than the last, although there are some who argue that Sudden Impact is better than The Enforcer was.