delriosong This review contains spoilersSudden Impact (1983) is the fourth film in the Dirty Harry franchise made famous by the film's director/star Clint Eastwood who portrays S.F. Police Inspector Harry Callahan. Callahan is a policeman motivated more by justice than the law, as such, he routinely resorts to extreme violence and is the target of retribution attempts. The combination causes great mayhem and friction between Inspector Callahan and his superiors.When a murder victim is traced back to small San Paulo, CA, Inspector Callahan is send to do background research on the victim to get him away from the city for a while. There he crosses paths with Jennifer Spencer, a troubled artist, and discovers that murders of the same MO are now occurring in San Paulo.This is overall a pretty good film and delivers on all the basic action film promises. However on one level, the themes and level of violence taken on by the film demand that it be seen as more than just popcorn fare. When I began to take this film too seriously I began to have problems. The violence becomes too personal and the story quite painful to view.Let's just break this film down by the numbers and let the chips fall where they may: A) Plot -- a tight and solid story free from apparent, first-viewing holes, and a believable arc -- 8 B) Characters -- not fully developed in any instance, archetypes abound and the portrayal of the black and lesbian characters was stereotypical -- 4 C) Acting -- Clint Eastwood and Sandra Locke deliver good performances and round out the script as much as possible -- 7 D) Script -- the original screenplay for this film is typical Dirty Harry fare, but satisfying -- 6 E) Direction -- Eastwood proves the sharpness of his eye and delivers another well directed film here. The carousel sequence, near the conclusion, proves the case, this could have easily fallen over into surrealistic parody, but is handled by a master working with his cinematographer and editor to achieve a great effect -- 7 F) Cinematography -- Artfully shot when desired, gritty when called for, a good job -- 7 G) Editing -- A good job of standard editing wherein the shot are neither too long, too short, or cut together jarringly except for effect. When effects are desired for mood the editing complements it quite well - 7 H) Production Design -- A good effort in a simple task -- 7 I) Costume Design -- Off the rack look, no memorable hero costuming, even for villains -- 5 J) Stunts -- Driving the burning car was impressive -- 8 K) Special & Visual Effects -- not much too see: N/A L) Music -- 6 M) Sound -- 7 N) Entertainment Value -- 7 Average 6.587 -- call it 7 of ten stars, pop lots of corn and try not to take it too seriously.This film features adult situations, adult language, alcohol and drug use, graphic violence including execution-style killings, violence against women including rape.

seymourblack-1 In the first three "Dirty Harry" movies, Detective Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) was seen as the maverick cop whose contempt for his superiors, the justice system and the rulebook regularly got him into trouble and in "Sudden Impact" nothing has really changed. He continues to survive in his job because his unorthodox methods get results but periodically, the costs of his actions in terms of expenses, physical destruction and bad publicity become so great that he temporarily has to be taken out of the firing line for the benefit of everyone involved.One of these situations arises again after the San Francisco cop shoots dead a whole group of criminals who were robbing a diner and then shortly after, confronts a local crime boss at his grand-daughter's wedding, in such a way that the old man suffers a fatal heart attack. Callahan, typically, is furious about being forced to take an unscheduled vacation but is left with no other choice.Unfortunately, when he's on vacation, Callahan gets attacked by a group of the crime boss' men and kills three of them before eliminating another group of thugs who try to kill him because he'd arrested one of their number who'd recently appeared in court but had been freed on a technicality. In the circumstances, Callahan gets assigned to a murder case which takes him to San Paulo, a nearby small town where he becomes friendly with a woman called Jennifer Spencer (Sondra Locke) and also finds that the local police chief, Lester Jennings (Pat Hingle), is openly hostile to the presence of a big city cop and has no intention of providing any assistance or co-operation.More killings (which are all carried out in the same way) follow and Callahan discovers that ten years earlier, the victims were all involved in the brutal gang-rape of Jennifer Spencer and her younger sister who'd remained in a catatonic state ever since. Callahan's methods for bringing murderers to justice are normally very simple and straight forward but, in this case, he decides that a rather different course of action is more appropriate."Sudden Impact" delivers its entertaining combination of action and humour at a brisk pace and features a punchy script which is full of witty one-liners and of course, the legendary catchphrase, "Go ahead. Make my day". The quality of the acting is very effective throughout with Clint Eastwood on great form. This was the only movie in the "Dirty Harry" series that Eastwood also directed and his work in relation to the action sequences and those where he makes good use of light and shadows to create the desired atmosphere are top class.Every crime thriller needs an interesting villain and Jennifer Spencer certainly fits the bill because she's a tragic victim, a brutal serial killer and also an artist whose works express her anguish very powerfully. This traumatised woman with a blank expression had, for ten years, harboured her hatred of the rapists and her absolute despair for her sister's predicament and although she might have derived some short-term satisfaction from carrying out her killing spree, it definitely wouldn't have brought her any closer to a cure for her ills.Audiences know exactly what they're going to get with a "Dirty Harry" film and on the evidence of the huge box office receipts for "Sudden Impact", no-one was disappointed this time around.

luke-a-mcgowan You know those Simpsons episodes where they do the running gag "McGarnagle"? The one which is a thin parody of Harry Callahan? I'm now less convinced that McGarnagle is a parody, and more convinced that it was a discarded script of this movie which the Simpsons creators used. Sudden Impact is so stupid that its funny. Most bad action films are just boring - A Walk Among the Tombstones comes to mind. But Sudden Impact is just so cartoonish and stupid that I burst out laughing every few minutes. This film has every single cliché that I didn't think was actually a thing that ever exists. The small town cop who shouts at Callahan "we don't need big city folks telling us how to do our jobs". The threats to "back off or I'll have you locked up!". Mandatory vacations for cops who are too badass. The constant references to vague authority figures who are "climbing up my ass" says a generic slightly lower authority figure. This film's screenplay is actually hilarious. Harry goes to the beach to a crime scene, where a big deal is made of the fact that the inspector goes there himself. The inspector demands to know what happened at Harry's hotel room (Harry gunned down a would-be assassin), like Harry broke a lamp or something. It'd be funny if they hadn't just made a big deal of the fact that this is a dead body. Sudden Impact has no story arc for Harry - its just a series of scenes where nameless henchmen try to kill him and he survives with increasingly comedic implausibility. Seriously - there are like 5 attempts on his life in 30 minutes. Each time, he dispatches them and carries on his business - walking his dog (which has several sex changes throughout the movie), irritating his boss, practising his shooting, etc. Cut into these inane sequences is the story of Jennifer Spencer (an extremely dull Sondra Locke) who is seeking out and murdering all of her rapists. At one point, Eastwood (who is behind the camera as director, would you believe it) accidentally inspires the Kill Bill revenge flashes with a scene that only highlights how much better Tarantino did it 20 years later. Spencer is such a boring character - her chemistry with Eastwood is non-existent and the final struggle with Head Rapist is just motions while we wait for Harry to show up.Eastwood is one of my favourite directors but there are some dreadful shots that should never have gotten through here. An old lady yanks a sniper rifle out from the counter to threaten Harry, who is assaulting witnesses to gain testimony (seriously?) Several various people are shot in the head and noticeably still breathing as their actors incompetently go through their death scenes. And in the film's most ludicrous scene, Harry drives a burning car along the pier, looking at the flames as if they are a minor irritation, before parking, exiting, reaching back into the flames and throwing a molotov at the attackers, who are all killed.This movie would have been more plausible if Harry was revealed to be a T-1000. Its so stupid its hilarious. I give it three stars - two stars just for the awesome line "go ahead, make my day".

Michael_Elliott Sudden Impact (1983)*** (out of 4) Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) not only upsets his bosses with his ways of handling thing but he also upsets a Mafia family who puts a hit out on him. When things become too crazy in San Franscisco he's sent up north to do some investigating on a murder and soon more bodies begin to pile up. It turns out that a woman (Sondra Locke) is seeking vengeance for the rape against her and her sister by tracking down those responsible.SUDDEN IMPACT is a good film, to a point, but there's no question that it was the weakest in the series up to date. It's rather strange because you could argue that on a technical level this here is the best one since the first film and a lot of the credit has to go to Eastwood who not only stars in the film but also produced and directed it. This fourth film certainly has a lot more polish on it as there's much more style and it's clear that Eastwood's directing skills are as sharp as always.The biggest problem with this movie is its screenplay, which was credited to two different writers and the story itself was also credited to two people includes Charles B. Pierce, the man behind films like THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK and THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN. I'm not sure what went wrong or what the original story idea was but what remains is a real mess. I say this because it really does seem as they were making stuff up as they went along because there's simply way too much stuff here and there's no doubt that some editing would have really helped. We get a ton of "story" at the start of the film and while the stuff with the Mafia makes for some great action scenes, in reality its story is bad. The stuff dealing with the rape/revenge is pretty straight-forward but then there's cover-ups and other things thrown in and by the time the ending comes it's just a big mess.With that said, the reason Dirty Harry is a classic is easily seen even in the weakest of the series. For starters, we've got Eastwood back, kicking butt and adding more bullets to countless scumbags. Seeing the actor with his laid back approach and sly humor works once again and there's no doubt that the actor can put a smile on your face with his one-liners. The quote "Go ahead, make my day" comes from this film and deserves its classic status. The action scenes are also quite brutal and it's always amazed me that the MPAA was so harsh against slasher films from this era but some of the gunshot wounds here are very violent in their own way but I'm certainly not going to complain.Locke is good in her supporting role as the rape victim and Pat Hingle is also very good in his role. Albert Popwell is fun in his supporting role and fans of PORKY'S will also be happy to see Nancy Parsons. SUDDEN IMPACT is certainly a product of its era but that's really not a bad thing. While the film is certainly watchable you can't help but notice its flaws and a little editing and a better story would have made for something more memorable.