SUDDEN IMPACT (1983)

The fourth of the Dirty Harry movies could never be considered to be among the best the series had to offer but it most certainly isn't the worse. Indeed Eastwood was initially reluctant to return to the character but he needed a cinema hit after the relative failure of criminally ignored masterpiece, Honkeytonk Man and the best ignored Firefox.

It was filmed in the late spring/early summer of 1983 and features the line "go ahead make my day, punk" which quickly entered the American lexicon. Clint claimed that he add libbed the line but in actual fact the line was present in the original script by Joseph Stinson. It matters not because it was Clint's mouthing it, in that casual demonic coolness only he can achieve, that gave it life and later, then president Bonzo Regan would quote the line during his famous speech on taxes.

Directed and Produced by Eastwood the film contains many of the stars trademark shots - the movie opens with an aerial shot of San Francisco. It's a redundant shot but does add a consistency of style for Eastwood as director since so many of his projects have opened with such a shot. However it does not contain the intensity nor the care of his best directorial work but then the film doesn't need it. It's a cop thriller, an action movie about a character that has long become a parody of himself. Dirty Harry is a wonderful screen creation and there can be serious issues threaded through the narrative but first and foremost Harry's an action man, a superhero - Superman with a Magnum or maybe Batman with a canon would be a better analogy.

The films starts off in the same old way - Harry is in trouble with his superiors and attracting trouble with every step. In the first section of the film he manages to get not only the mob baying for his blood but also a trio of local psychos who are sore after he beats up on their leader in the city court elevators. Harry has driven a power mob boss to a heart attack. And so with a contract on his head Harry is first ordered to take a few days off and relax which results in even more mayhem and so eventually he is sent out of town on a homicide case that relates to a particularly recent shooting in the Bay area.

The aforementioned shooting actually opened the movie, directly following the aerial shot of course, in which Sondra Locke gave a man a 45 calibre circumcision. Her character's story, one of rape and revenge, has been playing out alongside Harry antics and then both story threads come together and the film's main storyline is played out with Harry, very much a fish out of water away from the concrete jungle as he follows Sondra Locke who is avenging the rape of herself and her kid sister several years ago by finding the men responsible and blowing them away in sadistic fashion. Harry of course stops her but then after weighing up the situation, he walks away and allows the woman. her vendetta over, to fade away into obscurity. This is something that the Harry of the previous two movies would never have done but is very much in character to the original Dirty Harry. The law can't punish these animals and so justice is delivered by one of the women they violated.

Much has been made of the violent nature of this film - people are either beaten senseless or have their heads blown off, women are raped, punched, kicked and some of the scenes can leave a nasty taste in the modern viewers mouth. But it is worth remembering that the Harry series hails from the seventies and things were much gritter then. The rape scene is, even in flashback, extremely graphic and horrific and many critics slammed the film because of this, accusing the director of exploiting women. The fact that Sondra Locke, at the time Eastwood's real life lover, seemed to get raped in every Eastwood film she appeared in gave cod psychologists impetus to write reams of nonsense about the film.

Eastwood dismissed all this and hit back by saying that Sudden Impact was very much a feminist movie and that the character Sondra Locke plays is not the stereotype weak woman usually favoured by the cinema but almost a female version of Harry himself.

"I've always been interested in strong women. When I was growing up the women roles were equal to the men. Now you have a big macho man and the woman will be a wimp. Women in the audience don't like that and I believe the men don't either." Clint told Roger Ebert in an interview for the Chicago Times.

Audiences loved the return of Harry and the film grossed $70 million at the box office and of course introduced that famous line - go ahead make my day, punk - which is often mistakenly thought to have originated with the first film. Watching it now it's still a great action packed movie with Clint doing wonders on the screen just by being there. I've seen this film hailed as the best Harry film by fans on some forums and whilst I wouldn't go that far I do think it is better than the previous movie, The Enforcer but behind the first two movies. But then all of the Dirty Harry movies, even The Dead Pool, to my mind the silliest, are watchable and are a firm part of cinema history.


TRIVIA: The automag Clint uses here was not a weapon produced by the company and the model used here was made specifically for the film.

This was the last time Clint and Sondra Locke would work together and soon their private relationship would crumble as Clint went back to his womanising ways. It was during this period that Clint fell for Megan Rose who would bring a script called The William Munny Killings to the actor.


It's Clint, it's Dirty Harry, it's a bloody big gun - what more could you want!!!!!

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