Sudden Impact, a review by Jon
Sudden Impact3 out of 5
Sensitive to outcries of police brutality, the superiors of San Francisco Detective Harry Callahan have sent him on an out-of-town assignment until things cool down. But wherever Harry goes, things just get hotter.One of the interesting things about the Dirty Harry franchise is how it maintained a decent level of quality throughout the series. We're at number four in
Sudden Impact and while a couple of glaring faults let it down, in the main it is a worthy sequel, continuing to try something new. How many other series can claim that? Number five is another issue, but for now, this is a great achievement, all things considered.
There's a new edge to Harry and Clint plays him as well as ever since the original, and with a great new catchphrase (
"Go ahead. Make my day"). He's got a real chip on his shoulder because trouble seems to be following him around without him even trying now! This time he's making enemies of organised crime, which means he can't avoid being a target and causing untold damage everywhere he goes. So his bosses send him to a quiet town and it doesn't stay quiet for long, with a great action sequence using a bus to chase a thief!
He's there to help the reluctant local police investigate a murder and little does he know but the murderer is right there. Reclusive artist Sondra Locke is on a mission of revenge to pick off several members of a gang who years before raped her and her sister, who is now little more than a vegetable. She takes out the first couple with relative ease, but then morals start getting murky and the last couple are serious threats.
How much you like
Sudden Impact rather depends on how much credibility you give the plot. On one hand, it's directed by Eastwood himself who has always made interesting and challenging films where he can and it's easy to see this as a more natural development of
Dirty Harry than the previous two films. Locke is pretty good at convincing as a cold-blooded killer and shy artist, so she gets the viewers sympathy. Eastwood is asking us to be angry again, but also consider the cost of revenge. Finally, Harry also literally takes the law into his own hands, which marks him as much the flawed anti-hero as ever.
Then again, this is hardly
Oldboy. Hardly even
Play Misty For Me and the plot frequently goes for cheap set-pieces, so you have to wonder, how much of the dark moralising was on purpose and how much by accident of making such a film?
Albert Popwell is in it again and this time he gets more of a speaking part, but his character suffers a pointless fate that is blatantly only there to piss Harry off and make him and the viewer mad. Then we move to the predictable and limp showdown in the fair ground. It's dumb decisions like that reveal it as just any other part 4 of a tired franchise. But they are rare moments and there's enough good stuff here to mark it in the top two or three Dirty Harry's.
Split the odds and it can be seen as a nice mix of the serious drama of
Dirty Harry and the sillier
Magnum Force, which possibly set the template of cheap action movies. So it's extending both legacies and leaves us thinking while still having fun. Definitely a success overall. And it has Harry's best partner yet: Meathead, the farting bulldog!
(From Dirty Harry Marathon on June 14th, 2010)
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May 18, 2024, 04:46:01 PM
