Martin Rubin's Thrillers may deserve a reconsideration. In his section "Supercops" (137) he notes that an influx of police thrillers in the 70s may be due to law and order issues being foregrounded in 1968 and 1972 political campaigns and to "a general (though transitional and deeply conflicted) swing to the right in American politics. "Transitional and conflicted" is interesting to me here. Is there a sense in which the fear of city deployed in these films is politically ambiguous? Also, police films of this period seem to be where social issues of the day get there most nuanced and for the most part, liberal working through.