That's one of the Dirty Harry films, one of the first maybe, the third one actually. A cop who uses all his force to enforce the law and who discovers  for us  because he knows, that the main opposition to that kind of police force and police work is not so much the people who want security, or the press who only look for sensational news items and strong police work is good news, but the politicians who are moved not by principles but by a bunch of minority groups who are so vocal that they can cover the noise of a hurricane if they so decide. In this case we have one of those phony revolutionary groups who were inspired by extreme Maoism and pure egocentric paranoia and psychosis, who were  and are  a bunch of psychopaths in one word, who try to get money out of society by using fear, by capturing highly dangerous weapons and taking hostages, in this case the mayor of San Francisco. Clint Eastwood is a lot better than just this thriller but he doubles up the plot with the question of the integration of women in homicide departments in US police forces, which was a hot question in 1976. The films has gotten a new interest today because these pseudo Maoist and pseudo anarchist groups have become one of the most dangerous plagues of this world today? They are the FARCs in Colombia, they were the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, good riddance, they are many other groups of that kind that refuse to be political and to run into any normal political procedure and who know only violence and blackmailing. Am Qaeda is only a new perfectly organized group at global level that uses these terror tactics with the great financial power they capture from the stock exchanges around the world and from other forms of extortion and racketeering. The only answer is for sure the political will to defeat them, but the right strategy is not to shoot first but to corner them at all levels and then shoot them down if they don't want to come down all by themselves. There is no negotiation with these skunks. But we are talking of criminals here. What if these criminals have the power of a state in their hands? And the potential of nuclear weapons in their backyard? Clint Eastwood was a little bit young about this question. And that makes the question today all the more pregnant and potent.<br /><br />Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID