Impacto Fulminante

The Dirty Harry series are great films. Forget reality and political correctness, just enjoy the films. Like the rest of the series the formula is perfect in Sudden Impact, a great actor delivering action, humour, thrills and excitement.

Sudden Impact is the most unusual of the five Dirty Harry movies, but that doesn't make it the best. However, after the rather flat and comic-book heroics of the third film, The Enforcer, it's good to see some changes to the formula. Sudden Impact is quite a dark, moody piece of cinema with big emphasis on character. Yes, there's action, but the action in this one is only one piece of the jigsaw whereas in some of the other Dirty Harry outings the action was everything.

Harry Callahan (Eastwood) is in hot water with his superiors for carrying out an illegal search on a suspicious car. The young thugs he arrested are released because of the lack of evidence, and they set out to take revenge on Harry. However, Harry is a tough nut to crack - and pretty soon he is striking back in his own destructive style. Harry's boss decides to get Harry out of town for a while to avoid further bloodshed, so he assigns him to a quiet murder investigation in an isolated coastal town. Harry pieces together the mystery and discovers that the killer is a female artist (Locke) who is bumping off a bunch of drop-outs who gang-raped her and her sister years previously. Should he arrest her for the killings, or should he turn a blind eye and let her do away with these repellent scum-bags?

The film is probably the second best in the series (the original is always going to be considered the best). Peculiarly, it is the only Dirty Harry movie upon which Eastwood also doubled up as director. It isn't a whole success, with some needless scenes (what's the point of the sequence detailing the hold-up of a coffee shop?) and a couple of overly hammy performances by the main villains (especially the trailer trash redhead). On the whole, though, this is a very interesting and unusual addition to the series which gets by on the strength of being totally different to all the other four episodes.

A rape victim is going around, bumping off her attackers one by one, having been denied justice originally. A rather unconventional detective, Callahan is put on the case.. but whose side will he take?

This is one of the most brutal films I've seen in quite some time. Virtually every scene seems to be a set-up for some punks to make the mistake of annoying our hero, who then proceeds to beat the living daylights out of them, or simply blows their heads off. I am 100% convinced that if any serving officer did what the Eastwood character gets away with in this film, he would not only be stripped of his badge, but also be looking at a considerable stretch in prison. Another striking aspect of the picture is the violence used against the fairer sex. The female cast members get punched in the face, kicked when on they're on the ground.. And that doesn't even include the constant flashbacks we get of Sondra Locke's sexual assault ordeal (We get one every time she carries out one of her revenge attacks on her aggressors). The misogyny displayed on screen is incredible and is unlikely to endear itself to anyone concerned about domestic violence.

So why am I recommending it? Well for a start, the film is well directed, with some very exciting gunfights and car chases which will keep you on the edge of your seat. But the main reason for watching is Clint himself, the evergreen icon giving us another classy performance as a veteran cop who might not share the ethics of the modern police force, but tends to do the job 10x better than his colleagues who do it all 'by the book'. If only we had someone like that here in Britain, perhaps this country wouldn't be the crime hotspot it is these days.. 6/10

Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan once again angers his superiors with his maverick approach to police work. Refusing to take a vacation he is given a simple case which takes him outside of San Francisco. However, he soon discovers a link between a recent murder in the city and a murder outside of the city, which leads him to the trail of a revenge killer.

As an entry in the Dirty Harry franchise the film starts with some very promising moments, including the legendary "Go ahead, make my day" line that Eastwood delivers wonderfully through clenched teeth before single handedly foiling a robbery. Very badass and it just what fans can expect from him. However, the film soon shifts gears and focuses on the mysterious revenge killer. The problem is that this killer isn't all that mysterious as she is characterized as much as Harry is. This really detracts from the presence of the main character who ruled all of his previous film appearances with, pardon the pun, Magnum Force.

On the bright side this new storyline does draw several parallels to Harry's own unorthodox methods and gives his character dramatic depth that was not there before, but fans that were looking for another badass Harry outing will more than likely be somewhat disappointed. However, a tense climax ends the film on an exciting note so if you don't mind something a little different, it is a good movie for fans. --- 7/10

Rated R for violence and a rape scene

Sudden Impact was the fourth instalment in the 'Dirty Harry' series and the only one in which Clint Eastwood not only starred in but directed as well. This time, Harry Callahan is sent up the coast by his superiors to investigate a series of murders that are connected to a small ocean side resort town.

I reckon this may well be the third best entry in the series after the peerless first instalment and its follow-up Magnum Force (1973). Unlike the other two in the series, this one has a more interesting plot-line which involves a vigilante killer played by Eastwood regular actress Sandra Locke. She almost shares top-billing with him here such is the prominence of her role. She plays by far the most sympathetic villain in the series, one who dispatches a series of truly vile characters who assaulted her and her now comatose sister ten years previously. It's the very fact that the role has been written with a lot more depth that contributes to the audience empathising with her, while still knowing that she is committing a series of murders. This dramatic tension is underpinned by the theme of how ineffective and corrupt the justice system can be, leading to victims taking the law into their own hands.

This is probably the entry in the series that most veers into psychological thriller territory and I think this change does work in its favour. However, its bread and butter is still action and it hardly falls short on that score. There is an ongoing plot thread which has Callahan continually targeted by Mob hit-men who want him dead for an earlier infraction he instigated against one of their big bosses. Not only this but he also has high adrenaline encounters with three other sets of different criminals. It could be argued, however, that in its latter stages the film went too much in the direction of having villains acting like half-wits allowing for Callahan to escape their clutches and return to defeat them, while the finale in the fun-park felt a little too simplistically cheesy. But, these small gripes aside, I thought this to be a pretty fine effort for a fourth instalment in a film series and a pretty good film in its own right overall.