It's only a movie

Let me say, first off, that I really like Bronson movies and Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" movies and especially the Italian crime thriller movies they inspired. The problem is some people confuse them a little too much with reality. There's this tendency, for instance, to call anybody who sticks up for the so-called "rights of the criminals" a "bleeding heart liberal" or worse. It's not necessarily about that.

There are A LOT of countries in the world where the police can and do routinely beat confessions out of criminals or plant evidence. The crime situation is not necessarily any better in those countries than in the US though; it's usually much worse. First off, when you give the police that much power they generally become very corrupt. Second, even in America where the police are generally pretty honest, they sometimes just get it wrong. There's plenty of cases where the cops "liked" a certain suspect for a murder and even got a conviction, but it turned out the guy was completely innocent when DNA evidence came to light. The American justice system involves cops, district attorney's judges, those "evil" defense lawyers, and, most importantly, citizen juries. Any or all of these people can be fallible sometimes, but it's very unlikely you will improve things by giving all this power to the cops and cutting out everybody else.

There's the famous saying that people who will trade freedom for security deserve neither. Whether that's a matter of opinion or not, there's a lot of countries in the world (for instance, every country in Latin American) that have less freedom AND less security than America. Enjoy this movie (I did), but remember that it's only a movie.