![\"Clint](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Clint-Eastwood-Juror-No.-2-2024-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: \tWarner Bros. Pictures)<\/p>\n
Sat 28 February 2026 19:45, UK <\/p>\n
Having gunned down more faceless goons than the average movie star, and directed himself gunning down more faceless goons than any other movie star, apart from maybe Sylvester Stallone, it should go without saying that Clint Eastwood<\/a> is familiar with the concept of onscreen violence.<\/p>\n While it\u2019s often intrinsic to the nature of his character and the story he\u2019s telling, most famously in the seminal Unforgiven, sometimes, they were just action flicks designed to thrill an audience. Not every bullet has to mean something, and when he thought they didn\u2019t, it showed up his hypocritical side.<\/p>\n Don Siegel\u2019s Dirty Harry is a violent film, but that wasn\u2019t what left so many people up in arms. The title character is a ruthless, rule-breaking police officer happy to bend the law as and when he deems necessary, so long as it allows him to get the job done. It\u2019s clich\u00e9, but that wasn\u2019t what offended.<\/p>\n Instead, the classic crime thriller came under fire for its perceived political leanings, something Eastwood always denied. Paul Newman turned down the role for those very reasons<\/a>, opening the door to accusations of right-leaning subtext, pro-fascism tendencies, and overt support of vigilantism and police brutality.<\/p>\n It\u2019s tame when compared to some of the things shown in mainstream releases today, but as the franchise progressed, it couldn\u2019t help but be noticed that the hardest edges displayed in Siegel\u2019s original had been sanded down somewhat for Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact, and The Dead Pool.<\/p>\n \u201cWe live in a violent society,\u201d Eastwood explained in the late 1970s. \u201cNewspapers don\u2019t put it on the back pages. Those who would censor violence would have to censor the Bible and Shakespeare. Nobody would go to the movies and see the routine work of a policeman, an officer going door-to-door, the drudgery. It\u2019s the highlights they want.\u201d<\/p>\n The four-time Academy Award-winner made some salient points, but what he didn\u2019t have to do was turn his ire specifically toward another of the decade\u2019s most violent masterpieces. \u201cI think films can go overboard on violence,\u201d he offered. \u201cWe don\u2019t use slow-motion violence, for instance, or lingering blood squirts. Harry is a hero to the everyman, middle America, the working guy who\u2019d like to tell his boss where to put it.\u201d<\/p>\n None of those sentiments applied to Robert De Niro\u2019s Travis Bickle, obviously, so when that character resorted to violence, it didn\u2019t sit well with Eastwood. \u201cI\u2019d question a film like Taxi Driver,\u201d the actor and filmmaker said. \u201cWhere the hero is mentally ill.\u201d From his high horse, he suggested that it was OK for Harry Callahan to shoot the shit out of people because he was a cop, but since Bickle was clearly disturbed and suffering from non-work-related issues, Martin Scorsese had gone too far.<\/p>\n The violence in Taxi Driver has a point, though, and it\u2019s not just wanton carnage for the sake of it. That must have gone over his head, since Eastwood was so keen to question why someone like Bickle had been positioned as the hero of his own story<\/a>, which is clear to anyone who\u2019s seen it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The Far Out Clint Eastwood Newsletter<\/p>\n All the latest stories about Clint Eastwood from the independent voice of culture.
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