Eastwood's iconic portrayal of the blunt-speaking, unorthodox detective set the style for a number of his subsequent roles, and its box-office success led to the production of four sequels.

The main theme of this film is vigilante justice, and the plot revolves around a group of renegade traffic cops who are executing criminals who have avoided conviction in court.

Despite Harry's penchant for strong-arm methods, he does not tolerate coldblooded murder of the accused and resolves to stop the killers.

In this film, Harry is teamed with a female partner with no field experience (in 1976, American women had only recently been allowed to fill patrol and investigative assignments in most police bureaus), Inspector Kate Moore (Tyne Daly), as they take on a terrorist ring calling themselves the People's Revolutionary Strike Force.

Though Moore starts out overenthusiastic, she soon proves herself valuable to Harry and matures quickly, earning his respect in the process.

Bruce Willis played Hartigan, the "Dirty Harry of the story", in the Sin City (2005) film.

[13] Eastwood returned to acting after a four-year, self-imposed hiatus[14] in this 2008 film, which he also directed and produced, and partly scored with his son Kyle and Jamie Cullum, Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a recently widowed Korean War veteran alienated from his family and angry at the world.

Biographer Marc Eliot called Eastwood's role "an amalgam of the Man with No Name, Dirty Harry, and William Munny, here, aged and cynical, but willing and able to fight on whenever the need arose".

"[17] Amy Biancolli of the Houston Chronicle said that though Walt, an "old fart", does not have the same name as Dirty Harry, "there's no mistaking the rasp in his voice or the uncompromising crankiness of his Weltanschauung.

Warner's marketing plan called for only The Dead Pool to be available as a separate Blu-ray, requiring fans who want the other four movies in high definition to buy the box set.

[21] In 2010, all five movies were released as a Blu-ray box set, Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry Collection.

Notable features include a gun-handle shooter, a moving cannon used to shoot playfield targets, and custom audio callouts recorded by Clint Eastwood.

Dirty Harry, originally scheduled for a 2007 release, is a canceled video game by The Collective based on the 1971 film of the same name.