Hollywood nuked the hero-cop, in an effort to be less offensive to those who might confuse movies with real life. Nowadays, exploring a cop’s internal struggles in film and seeing the world through their eyes in our current, crime-ridden era is far too brazen and provocative.

And if a filmmaker dares try, our cadre of trusty critics and demagogues are ready to swarm and condemn any effort as an endorsement of all police actions and an apology for anything awful that a real cop has ever done.

Maybe we are this impressionable?

Would the resurrection of cops as big-screen protagonists elevate the optics of the law enforcement profession, attracting a more inspired applicant? (See the Navy recruitment boost after 1986’s “Top Gun”) Cadets who are more equipped to deescalate tensions, make split-second life-or-death calls, even catch the teenage version of me?

[Good question, although it does have a flip side. Have decades of portraying unconstitutional methods as somehow heroic impacted previous generations of recruits, incentivizing those with worse instincts? One should recall that “Dirty Harry,” cited by Stahlberg, was at least somewhat intended as a warning against proto-fascism under color of authority, which explains why Harry threw his badge away at the end of the film. Audiences reacted much differently to Clint Eastwood’s character, however, and turned a social criticism (at least in part) into a vigilante-esque franchise. The pendulum has swung too far the other way the last few years, though. — Ed]