Walking Tall is a 1973 American neo-noir biographical vigilante action film based on the life of Buford Pusser, a professional wrestler-turned-lawman in McNairy County, Tennessee, played by Joe Don Baker.

With a friend, Pusser visits a gambling and prostitution establishment The Lucky Spot, and is beaten up after catching the house cheating at craps.

Pusser is elected, and becomes famous for being incorruptible and intolerant of crime, and for his array of four-foot hickory clubs, which he uses to great effect in dispatching criminals and destroying their clandestine gambling dens and illegal distilleries.

Some residents praise Pusser as an honest cop in a crooked town; others denounce him as a bully willing to break some laws to uphold others.

[6] Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that, despite disliking the film, whose final scene he likened to "a nice KKK bonfire," he could "admire the manner in which it manipulates its audience through various notable clichés.

"[7] Judith Crist of New York Magazine wrote: "Walking Tall grabs you where trash and violence invariably do, with excellent performers, shrewd plotting, and pacing.

The film is set in 1967 and focused on real-life Sheriff Buford Pusser, who goes after a criminal who has killed young people with his illegal moonshine.

These sequels starred Kevin Sorbo as Nick Prescott, the son of the town's sheriff, who takes the law into his own hands when his father is killed in a suspicious car accident.