Should Dirty Harry be remade today, but actually be a good remake?

Neeson’s character wasn’t an officer of the law, so it isn’t an accurate comparison.
People may cheer for the officer to bend, or even break, the law to get results but the fact remains it’s the farthest thing from the truth.

But even if it's furthest from the truth people still cheer for it in movies though. I thought people cheering for it in a movie, is different than how they would feel in real life?

Yes, people may cheer for the cop who breaks the rules to get the criminal, but they know that the reality is no one wants rogue cops taking another’s into their own hands.
You essentially repeated my post.

Oh okay, so with that in mind, wouldn't people be open for a rule breaking cop protagonist in movies, then, since it was mentioned that they would not be open to that because of real life?

It's a really interesting question.

But I think there might not be anything that actually makes it a Dirty Harry movie (other than the name). DH is intentionally 2 dimensional IMO, and I think if you added depth to that super carefully, what you'd have is an incredibly good cop movie, but not DH.

(I think.....you've got me pondering this one.....).

__________________
Rules:

When women have a poet, they want a cowboy.
When they have a cowboy, they want a poet.
They'll say "I don't care if he's a poet or cowboy, so long as he's a nice guy. But oh, I'm so attracted to that bad guy over there."

Understand this last part, and you'll get them all.

I was ----->this<----- close to spitting out my diet coke reading this.

LOL!

Yes, it would always be viewed more positively, whether or not it's a good idea for society. A line of "who deserves what" is endemic to all policing, and a public perception of that might skew over time, but it would never go away significantly for serious emotionally charged crimes like that.

Well when the first Dirty Harry movie came out, I don't think there were cops that broke the rules in movies as much as Harry did, was there? It was a hit because it got under people's skin wasn't it? So isn't a movie's subject matter getting under people's skin a movie thing in some cases, and it would probably be a hit again today, if it revives the rule breaking cop genre?

Corrupt, vigilante cops have been a staple in movies since they began.

__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Oh okay, so if that's the case, then people shouldn't be offended by one in a movie nowadays, should they?

It would probably help not to think of "people" as a homogeneous entity that is only capable of holding one viewpoint at a time so much as a group of individuals who are all capable of holding their own individual viewpoints. Some people will watch Dirty Harry and genuinely like that it shows a police officer torturing and murdering a particularly vile criminal, while others will dislike it because it ultimately rationalises and justifies behaviour that would be abhorrent if practiced by real cops. Or maybe one could actually interpret the film as an indictment of police brutality and that Harry throwing away his badge is meant to signify that he realises just how far he's gone in attempting to maintain law and order (though this is arguably undone by the sequels). Different people will get different things out of it and the sequels do occasionally attempt to explore the nuances of the character (especially in their choice of antagonists like the extremist vigilante cops in Magnum Force or the vengeful rape survivor in Sudden Impact) so it's really a question of weighing the various different opinions and reactions that the character and his actions provoke to evaluate his continuing relevance and whether or not a remake could ever truly work without diluting what makes the character unique (for better or worse).

__________________
Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

No, it wasn't a hit because it "got under people's skin".

It was a hit because people love the idea of giving bad guys what they truly deserve even if it requires a significant bending of the law.

dont let Eli Roth or Bruce Willis anywhere near it.

__________________
Do you know what a roller pigeon is, Barney? They climb high and fast, then roll over and fall just as fast toward the earth. There are shallow rollers and deep rollers. You can’t breed two deep rollers, or their young will roll all the way down, hit, and die. Officer Starling is a deep roller, Barney. We should hope one of her parents was not.

Hartigan from Sin City was basically Frank Miller's attempt at a Dirty Harry knock-off anyway.

Or Steven Spielberg

What happened to Spielberg, anyway? That deserves its own thread. Once upon a time, he seemed like the world's favorite director. Now he seems to be irking folks. {shrug}

Like Sick Boy once said, you get old and you cannae hack it anymore. Blockbusters are all brands and journeymen these days so there's no room for a capital-D Director like Spielberg, and even then his recent output suggests he doesn't care that much about doing blockbusters anymore. Meanwhile, his prestige pics have similarly suffered and they also seem a little churned out at times (especially something like The Post really feeling like a rush job).

Besides, if we're going to fan-cast who should direct a Dirty Harry remake, it has to be Zahler - for better and for worse.

We've always loved to kick ole Spielberg around here. I'll confess to loving many of his movies and when he made serious films he did it right. But I truly hate some of his best known films like: E.T., A.I., War Horse and Avatar. OK, so he didn't direct Avatar but he would've if he could've

Spielberg has always been one of my most favorite directors, and do not know why today's generation doesn't like him compared to 20 years ago. He was probably the best director of the 80s and 90s and mid 2000s, but haven't much from him since Munich, which I loved.

E.T. -LOVED it.
A.I. - LIKED it a lot (I'm a software engineer, with a long-time interest on AI algorithms. The movie was very much in the "very likely how it will be" category.)

The thing about Spielberg is that his movies were so amazing to me at the time. Truly phenomenal feelings leaving the theater (which is the only metric that matters):

TRULY epic feeling on the way to the car:

Jaws (Yes, I saw it when it came out as a kid, and many times since. Holy Moley what a movie).
Cretaceous Park (sic.): "Wow, just wow. NO ONE had EVER seen a dinosaur before that actually looked real. Keep that in mind."
Lincoln
Indiana Jones TOD
Always

Those movies always stuck with me. I think "kids today" don't have the stake in the sand by which to measure things properly. There's literally no context for them to weigh anything.