Clint Eastwood is famous for being a tough guy. He's Dirty Harry, after all.

But it's time we realized he's misunderstood. His movies -- the ones he directs, rather than simply stars in -- have consistently made the case for peace, even love.

His latest effort, the blockbuster hit "American Sniper," has been caught up in a fierce ideological debate, with some critics pillorying it for fuelling pro-war sentiments. New York magazine critic David Edelstein called it "jingoist" and a "Republican platform movie." But Eastwood insists the movie "certainly has nothing to do with any (political) parties or anything ... there's no political aspect there other than the fact that a lot of things happen in war zones."

He says it's an anti-war movie. "The biggest antiwar statement is what (war) does to the families left behind," the acclaimed 84-year-old director said over the weekend at a Producers Guild awards breakfast.

"Contrary to public opinion, I abhor violence," he's said.

Eastwood's movies, going back to Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns in the 1960s that established his laconic image, have always trafficked in violence. And he wouldn't have it any other way. As he views it, violence is key to the American experience. Being an American filmmaker, he has no choice but to make violent movies. Since the 1970s, he's directed almost all of the features he's starred in -- and many he hasn't.

But while he's been hugely successful as a director of violent movies, he's never endeavored to make Rambo pictures. His Dirty Harry character has been accused of glorying in violence, but the rare moviegoer willing to look beyond Eastwood's cartoonish scene-munching recognized where the film franchise was trying to go. The New York Times, reviewing the 1971 original, noted the movie's "desperate awareness that for this world the only end of movement is in pain." Don Siegel directed "Dirty Harry," and he was an important influence on Eastwood as a filmmaker. (Eastwood directed the penultimate movie in the series, 1983's "Sudden Impact.")

Eastwood is an excellent filmmaker, but his limitations as an actor often have hampered his attempts to get across his themes. As a performer, he's simply not adept at showing emotion or human complexity. (Remember his notorious speech at the 2012 Republican National Convention? Did you get that he was telling the empty chair we shouldn't have gone into Iraq and Afghanistan? Don't worry: no one else did, either. But he was.)

The fighting men he's played over the years have rarely been admirable human beings. Dirty Harry was a capable police detective -- and maybe he had a point about the coddling-the-criminals ethos of the Warren Court era -- but he also was hopelessly racist and ham-handed. He cut a lonely figure, and there was good reason for that. Philo Beddoe, the protagonist in the sort-of comedy "Every Which Way But Loose," was a redneck who drove around town with his pet orangutan and worked out his frustrations by beating people up. It was "Fight Club" before "Fight Club." The hero in "Firefox" was another Dirty Harry type: "What is it with you Jews?'' he asks one of the men helping him steal a secret Soviet military plane. All of these Eastwood characters, it's suggested in one way or another, could use a little love and understanding.

Roger Ebert described Eastwood's career soldier in 1986's "Heartbreak Ridge" as a "hard-drinking loser," and the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, as he usually did, hit the nail on the head. But as with most of Eastwood's other characters, the moviegoing public for the most part saw only a rough, tough hero. The character was a rough, tough hero, of course, but look where it got him: nowheresville.

Ebert's colleagues and most critics didn't catch up to his insight until 1992, when Eastwood brought out "Unforgiven," which can be considered the last leg of his anti-Western Western trilogy that started with "The Outlaw Josey Wales" (1976) and continued with "Pale Rider" (1985). The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel's critic, Candice Russell, asked: "What would directors John Ford and Sam Peckinpah make of 'Unforgiven'? Director and actor Clint Eastwood's western de-mythologizes the American past. ... One might even call it an apologia for all the false impressions propagated by cowboy pictures through the decades."

"Unforgiven" transformed Eastwood's reputation in Hollywood almost overnight, and he won Oscars for best director and best picture. Which is why some critics were disappointed when he followed his big breakthrough with "A Perfect World," a traditional chase movie in which Eastwood once again played the hard-bitten cop on a mission. They didn't notice that the criminal being chased, messed up by the penal system and a dysfunctional family, was made far more relatable and appealing then the one-dimensional law enforcers chasing him.

Eastwood's abhorrence of violence and war -- and, indeed, authority and conventionality in general -- have become clearer in the latter part of his career as he's stayed behind the camera for movies such as "Mystic River" and "Letters from Iwo Jima." But it's always been there. (Check out his little-known third directing effort, 1973's May-December romance "Breezy," in which he appears only as an extra.) Not that Eastwood is counting on perceptions about his work truly changing. Long-time attitudes, after all, are difficult to recast -- especially if they've been formed by looking up at a movie screen. Eastwood's portrayals of Harry Callaghan and the Man With No Name and other kill-first-and-don't-bother-asking-questions characters are ingrained in the American psyche. Even though Eastwood doesn't appear in "American Sniper," many moviegoers expect star Bradley Cooper to serve as his stalking horse, to be Dirty Harry in Iraq.

-- Douglas Perry