Sudden Impact (1983)

A Masterpiece!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A rape victim is exacting revenge on her aggressors in a small town outside San Francisco. "Dirty" Harry Callahan, on suspension for angering his superiors (again), is assigned to the case. Once again Clint Eastwood brings on the guns, the action and most of all? the one liners in the 4th film of the Dirty Harry series 'Sudden Impact' i mean what is there to say that hasn't been said? This movie is just amazing, it's action packed, it's full of suspense and thriller and just never stops having you at the edge of your seat. If you loved the previous installments you're going to love this one as well, trust me pal. (10/10)

In this particular film, the San Francisco detective named "Harry Callahan" (Clint Eastwood) is initially given an assignment involving a murder which took place in a car on the beach. However, due to his less- than-orthodox approach in dealing with criminals he is subsequently ordered to the small coastal town of San Paulo to pursue whatever leads he can find related to that specific investigation. Although this assignment began as a simple ploy by his supervisors to get him out of San Francisco for a while, as luck would have it another murder is then committed in San Paulo that matches the same pattern of the first crime--and leads Harry to soon realize that the killer operates somewhere in this small town! Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a pretty good film which was almost ruined by one particular scene involving a small toy car chasing Inspector Callahan all though the streets of San Francisco. While it may have been cute at first I thought it got quite ridiculous after several minutes or so. But that is just my opinion. In any case, while this wasn't a bad film by any means I didn't think it was nearly as good as the three previous films in the "Dirty Harry" series and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Average.

The Dirty Harry series will always have a special place in my heart – just because it's so darned cool. Clint Eastwood lives and breathes the role of the unorthodox cop, and by the time of this third sequel – the fourth and penultimate movie in the long-running franchise – he shows no signs of flagging or losing enthusiasm for his subject matter, directing as well as starring as the tough cop.This has got to be the most entertaining Dirty Harry since the first movie. The series makes a fine segue from late '70s grittiness to early '80s flashiness, retaining the same hard edge that made the early films so successful. Here, Harry is once again arguing with his superiors, who this time send him on an enforced holiday to a little town where he begins to track down a serial killer. Along with that, the usual hoodlums and gangsters are gunning for our hero, leading to a literally action-packed movie in which we watch Harry chase a thug through the streets in an old people's bus (a highlight), have shoot-outs with his trusty sidepiece, and even deliver another famous line – this time, it's the "make my day" one.The main thrust of the story is about Eastwood's one time partner, Sondra Locke, as we follow her delivering her own brand of justice against a gang of men who once gang-raped her and her sister. It's a violent chronicle, exposing the psychology of such a crime, and it works, providing a fitting parallel to Harry's own character. The cast are at the top of their game here, with nobody putting a foot wrong, from the icy, slightly alien Locke, to Paul Drake as a truly loathsome baddie. There are also a ton of great character actors filling out supporting roles, like Bradford Dillman, Pat Hingle, and in particular Albert Popwell, who is fine as Harry's partner. Add in some great laughs in the form of a bad-mannered dog and you have a great film that just gets better as time goes by.

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.