50 Greatest Action Movies Of All Time

26. Dirty Harry (1971)

Crank 2
Warner Bros.

Clint Eastwood created yet another iconic character with his turn as anti-hero Harry Callahan in Don Siegel's classic cop thriller, a movie that would spawn four sequels and influence an entire generation of police movies.

Eastwood's screen presence and charisma turn a potentially-unlikable character into a cultural icon, not to mention his delivery of one of cinema's greatest monologues that is still widely quoted today. Siegel's gritty and violent urban Western is rightly regarded as a classic, and set the tone for a great deal of 1970s action cinema.

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