Dirty Harry

The vigilante fantasy given a badge. Clint Eastwood's San Francisco detective, contemptuous of a system he sees as coddling a serial killer, pursues the sniper Scorpio outside the rules, and the film's fury at due process made it a lightning rod. Pauline Kael called it fascist, and she was not simply wrong.

It is also superbly made, Don Siegel directing Eastwood at his most iconic, and the moral discomfort is baked in whether or not the film intends it. The killer is frightening. The famous monologue entered the language.

Reactionary, brilliant, and impossible to dismiss.