Sudden Impact (1983) Warner Bros./Action RT: 117 minutes Rated R (language, strong violence, brief nudity, sexual content, rape) Director: Clint Eastwood Screenplay: Joseph Stinson Music: Lalo Schifrin Cinematography: Bruce Surtees Release date: December 9, 1983 (US) Cast: Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Pat Hingle, Bradford Dillman, Paul Drake, Audrie J. Neenan, Jack Thibeau, Michael Currie, Albert Popwell, Mark Keyloun, Kevyn Major Howard, Bette Ford, Nancy Parsons, Joe Bellan, Wendell Wellman, Mara Corday, Russ McCubbin, Robert Sutton, Nancy Fish, Carmen Argenziano, Lisa Britt, Bill Reddick, Lois de Banzie, Matthew Child, Michael Johnson, Nick Dimitri, Michael Maurer, Michael V. Gazzo (uncredited). Box Office: $67.6 million (US)
Rating: ****
Instead of opening my review of Sudden Impact in any of my usual ways, I’d like to describe the three scenes that open the fourth entry in the Dirty Harry series instead. They define exactly who Inspector Harry Callahan (Eastwood) is.
– After a judge dismisses another of Harry’s cases due to illegal search and seizure, the punk (Howard, Full Metal Jacket) taunts him in the courthouse elevator. Harry grabs him by the shirt, slams him against the wall, gets in his face and says, “Listen, punk. To me you’re nothin’ but dog s—, you understand? And a lot of things can happen to dog s—. It can be scraped up with a shovel off the ground. It can dry up and blow away in the wind. Or it can be stepped on and squashed. So take my advice and be careful where the dog s—s ya!” He scares the s— out of that punk.
– Harry stops by his favorite diner for his morning coffee. The waitress tries to signal something’s wrong by pouring a lot of sugar into his java, but he doesn’t even notice. He leaves and a group of armed robbers resume their hold-up of the joint. They’re interrupted by Harry again when he comes in through the back. After a few terse words, he pulls his .44 Magnum and shoots all four of the robbers. One survives and takes the waitress hostage. Harry points his gun at him and sneers, “Go ahead, make my day.” The creep wisely gives up.
– Harry crashes a wedding reception for the granddaughter of a major crime boss (Gazzo, The Godfather Part II) to inform him he has irrefutable evidence against him in a murder case. He threatens to make it public. The old man dies of a heart attack on the spot. BTW, it was a ruse.
Based on the three incidents I just described, is it any wonder Harry’s superiors are worried about bad publicity for the San Francisco PD? Not only that, he’s just made himself a target for the dead mob boss’ guys. After a violent encounter with a group of hitmen, Harry’s CO gives him an out-of-town assignment, wanting him to stay away until the heat dies down. He sends him to the small, peaceful town of San Paulo to look into the background of a murder victim who was shot twice, once in the head and once in the genitals.
The local police chief (Hingle, The Gauntlet) isn’t happy about the big city cop being there, especially after he helps chase down a robber in his usual chaotic manner the minute he arrives in town. It seems like a routine background check until a second victim is killed in the exact same way. The chief refuses to listen to Harry, so he starts his own investigation.
There’s no mystery to the identity of the killer. It’s an artist named Jennifer Spencer (Locke, Any Which Way You Can) out for revenge against the scumbags that gang raped her and her younger sister about ten years earlier. It left her sister in a catatonic state and Jennifer a bitter, man-hating head case. After taking out her first victim in San Francisco, she heads to San Paolo to finish the job. Of course, she and Harry cross paths a few times before he figures it out.
No Dirty Harry movie is complete without a psycho villain. In Sudden Impact, it’s A-1 screwball Mick (Drake, “Holdup Man #1” from Beverly Hills Cop), the ringleader of the crime. He returns to town after one of the old gang (Neenan, Not Necessarily the News) calls to tell him what’s happening. Once he comes home, things spiral out of control.
Sudden Impact is the most action-packed installment of the series. Eastwood, who also directs, trims the fat and leaves the audience with the lean. He eliminates non-essentials like character, plot development and motivation to focus on the action. He doesn’t waste too much time debating the morality of Jennifer’s actions. It comes up once or twice, but it’s clear the movie is on the side of the vigilante. I must confess I cheered right alongside everybody else each time Jennifer got one of her rapists. Aside from that, it’s just a great cop movie with plenty of exciting scenes like when Harry goes after the San Paulo robber in a retirement home bus occupied by elderly passengers cheering him on.
By this point, Harry isn’t a realistic character. He’s a force to be reckoned with. He’s a hero cop that shows up at the right place at the right time and kills all the bad guys. He survives more attempts on his life than the Road Runner. He violates so many rights; it’s a miracle he’s still on the force. Eastwood plays the role with his usual stoicism. That is, until some punk makes him angry. That’s when the vein in his forehead bulges and he gets this crazy look in his eyes. That’s classic Dirty Harry!
My only complaint about Sudden Impact is Locke. Simply put, she can’t act. She plays Jennifer in too mechanical a manner. We never believe she’s sufficiently angry or traumatized enough to resort to murder. Drake, on the other hands, plays it to the rafters as Mick, a wild-eyed whack job that relishes the idea of getting another shot at Jennifer. BTW, series regular Albert Popwell makes his final Dirty Harry appearance as Horace, a friend of Harry’s who gifts him with a bulldog. Sadly, he also plays the same part as most of Harry’s partners. You know what I mean, right?
Sudden Impact is my favorite of the Dirty Harry sequels. So what if it isn’t the least bit plausible. If I wanted plausibility, I’d stay home and watch the news. I admit to some personal bias on my part; it’s the first one I saw at the movies. I saw it with my parents and 11YO brother opening weekend (Saturday matinee, of course). Despite it being the opposite of family-friendly, we thought of it as a family movie. We enjoyed it so much we saw it a second time a few months later at a $1 movie theater. What can I say, we didn’t do Disney.
There’s one moment near the end of Sudden Impact that’s vintage Dirty Harry and Eastwood. After Mick and his cohorts think they’ve killed the cop, they capture Spencer and prepare to rape her again. That’s when Harry shows up in back-lit silhouette sporting his .44 AutoMag, a handgun far more powerful than his usual weapon. It reminds me of the sudden appearances his Man with No Name character would make in Sergio Leone’s famous spaghetti westerns. All that’s missing is the theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Speaking of which, Lalo Schifrin returns to score this installment. It’s another great jazzy score. PLUS, the end song by Roberta Flack (“This Side of Forever”) is wonderful. Other than Locke’s lackluster performance, Sudden Impact is AWESOME! Hey, it made my day. It still does.
