Murder is (almost) OK according to Mr Eastwood

Rating: 3/10 (6 February 2010)

Yes sir, if you have the slightest suspicion that someone (e.g. one of your childhood friends) has murdered your daughter, it is perfectly OK these days (according to our esteemed director) to get together a couple of your thuggish cohorts (adult this time) whom you spent time with in prison, get the fellow (back to the childhood friend now) tipsy then stab him in the stomach and blow his brains out. This is not merely OK but downright reasonable behavior, and manly to boot. As what were you doing except avenging the death of your beloved daughter? Not only will this cause your wife to want to have passionate sex with you but you will also have supposedly law-abiding detectives turning blind eyes and deaf ears in just about every direction you can think of.
Of course murder (and indeeed the sordid history of child abuse) usually has a long chain of cause and effect. In this particular case, the murder weapon was previously involved in a number of criminal activities in which our avenging superhero was also implicated. So we could say that he was in fact more responsible for the death of his own beloved daughter than was his childhood friend, and perhaps he should have taken the aforementioned weapon to himself and shot himself down like a dog.
But then, we wouldn't have a superhero and hardly much of a story. And where would Hollywood be without violent crime and retribution? Or sex?
Such is the power of the gun in modern America.