That Damn Dirty Harry

I was a bit confused by the way the assignment was laid out in the syllabus, so I went with Question 2 from page 92.

The over-arching theme at the heart of Dirty Harry is one of revenge, and getting justice when it would be otherwise impossible. The ideology at play is one of two wrongs making a right, really. You have to accept that, in the face of his partner having died, everything Dirty Harry does is called for, including the collateral damage, which is considerable.
The film is set in San Francisco in 1970 because it represented a total end of free love and the hippie movement of the time. Here was a city that was at the center of a huge movement based almost solely on ideological ideals, and Dirty Harry was the antithesis of that. I enjoyed this part of the question, because I never thought about the choice of city before. It makes the movie that much better.