Sudden Impact (1983) dir. Clint Eastwood
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Sandra Locke, Pat Hingle, Paul Drake

***

By Alan Bacchus

By far the most monetarily successful entry in the venerable cop series is Sudden Impact, the fourth go around the ornery, vigilante cop who works in the most liberal city in America. This contradictory setup still has legs and results in sustained entertainment.

Though he was born in the 70’s the Callaghan character was made for the 80’s. His staunchly conservative values and shoot-first-ask-questions-later attitude fits rights into the zeitgeist of this rather unpleasant decade of cinema. Thankfully Warner Bros execs, who know the crime genre better than anybody, never did let the series fall into self-parody or corny cartoonish action.

The 80s is palpable here though. It’s much grimmer and violent, with a dozen or so extremely grisly deaths throughout. This time round Dirty Harry investigates a series of murders of a group of men all killed in the same manner – a shot to the groin and a shot to the head. Behind the grisy acts is Jennifer (Sandra Locke), a mousy and unassuming gal, and former rape victim who has come back to town to get revenge on her assailants. Locke's performance, deeply psychological and intense, is a stark contrast to Callaghan's bubblegum baddies of the '70s. She is simply fantastic and Oscar-worthy.

Key to Harry’s dramatic arc in this one is his new Magnum gun – not a revolver, but an automatic pistol/phallus which he keeps in a case in his house for ‘special occasions’. Of course, the beast of a gun comes out at the end when he confronts the leader of the rapists.

The picture loses some credibility with a couple of inexplicable narrative coincidences. Chiefly the relationship Harry develops with Jennifer, a random meeting between two people, a cop and his suspect. And Harry in a relationship just doesn’t feel right. The idea of these two people having romantic pillow talk is too chilly to believe. Thankfully we don’t see much a romance, more of a silent acknowledge of respect from Harry to Jennifer for avenging these unpunished bad deeds.

As the only entry directed by Clint, there’s a distinct panache behind the camera not evident since the Don Siegel-directed original. Clint’s usual super 35mm process widens the screen out even more. And as far as the famous catch-phrase, 'Go ahead make my day', it caps off a well-directed sequence - Harry using his Magnum force and a succinct line of dialogue to convince the robber of a cafe to surrender. The scene is truly worthy of this great one-liner.

The Enforcer (1976) dir. James Fargo
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Tyne Daly

***

by Alan Bacchus

Dirty Harry is one of cinema's unlikely venerable characters, a conservative, anti-social, pragmatic, asexual who fights crime like a vigilante on the legitimate side of the law. Harry seems to have been born from a frustration by the conservative right for the ineffectiveness of the increasingly politically correct bureaucracy of the new liberal America.

And so, Dirty Harry Callahan, the San Francisco cop who packs a Magnum .44, the most powerful handgun in the world and could blown you head clean off (sorry for the digression), is like the poisoned pill of the police department who exacts vengeance like he's in the lawless West, with his own personal code of justice.

But there's a reason why Dirty Harry has persisted in pop culture and is enjoyed by all audiences, both liberal and conservative: Clint Eastwood's immeasurable star power, which cuts through the rather dull investigative plotting of these films.

By the time of The Enforcer, it was the third run for Dirty Harry. In most cinematic institutions, we would start to see self-parody and exhaustion in the character. And sure, there are some decreasing returns in enjoyment, but The Enforcer is still a fun romp. Sterling Silliphant's script sings with snappy one liners for Clint, including this film's catch phrase, "marvellous," Harry's rather succinct reaction to the absurdities of liberalism encroaching on his old world ways.

Unlike Harry's desperate search for the Zodiac killer in the first Dirty Harry, we don't much care about the investigation in this one. This time round, Harry chases down a group of extreme activists who use terrorism as their primary form of shock and awe. The anchor of this picture is his relationship with a new female partner (played by Tyne Daly), who seems to have been hired by a committee for affirmative action. This type conflict is the stuff great screenwriters hit homeruns with and veteran scribe Silliphant indeed sculpts a solid movie from this dynamic.

Unfortunately, the treatment of race in all these pictures is rather alarming. Black people are treated as threats at every turn. In one scene in The Enforcer, Harry questions the leader of a black militant gang while his female partner waits in another room filled with suspicious-looking African-Americans with surly looks on their faces, implying that the innocent white girl just might get raped. But then again, we have to watch these in the context of its period.

The finale on Alcatraz sends the audience out on an odd sombre tone. The gravitas of the death of his loyal partner is not quite handled properly and not given enough room to breathe and for both Harry and the audience to reconcile this with Callaghan’s methods.