“I think what surprised me the most about this film is who the MVP is here. It’s not Dirty Harry. It’s the vigilante that he is tracking down.”
Sudden Impact was an action-thriller film released in 1983, written by Joseph Stinson and directed by (as well as starring) Clint Eastwood as Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan alongside Sondra Locke as Jennifer Spencer. Basically, it’s about this badass, zero-nonsense detective who gets sent to a quiet coastal town to cool his heels, only to cross paths with a woman who’s secretly going full John Wick on a gang of scumbags who brutally attacked her and her sister a decade earlier. While Harry is trying to piece together who is leaving all these dead bodies behind, he has no idea that the quiet artist he’s hitting it off with is actually the vigilante pulling the trigger.
Thirteen years ago, I watched my first Dirty Harry film, and it wasn’t the first film in the franchise. It was the final film, The Dead Pool. The reason I watched that film was, at the time, I was going through Jim Carrey’s entire filmography, and he played a very small role in it. The thing is... I remember next to nothing about that movie. Now, over a decade later, I’m watching the fourth film in the saga as I’m going through yet another filmography: Clint Eastwood’s directed films. Given the fact that he directed one of his own Dirty Harry films, I just ended up watching the fourth movie.
Apparently, I am going to be watching this franchise in reverse every ten years or so. At this rate, I should be finished watching all of the Dirty Harry movies in the year 2065 when I’m 77 years old... if I make it that long.
While I didn’t really remember that much about The Dead Pool, I will admit this one stuck out to me quite a bit more. First of all, it has the iconic line, “Go ahead, make my day...”, which Clint Eastwood actually says twice in the film, and it is every bit as awesome as I thought it would be. But I think what surprised me the most about this film is who the MVP is here. It’s not Dirty Harry. It’s the vigilante that he is tracking down, played by Sondra Locke.
Throughout all of these Clint Eastwood movies that I’ve been covering, Sondra has shown up in them... a lot. She was one of his many long-term mistresses and he put her in the forefront of a lot of his projects, but this is probably my personal favorite performance and character from her. It’s very human, very relatable, and very understandable. This is a woman scorned after she and her sister were sexually assaulted by multiple people. This left her sister basically catatonic after the encounter, and she’s out there tracking down each perpetrator and taking them out one by one when the justice system has otherwise failed them.
I love this plot. It makes you think. It’s not just this questionable cop tracking down a terrible person; he’s tracking down someone he can fully understand on a deeper level. I mean, the film even opens up with Dirty Harry going to a court trial and watching as a person who is very clearly guilty is let go. He sees very early on that the court system doesn’t always work, and he understands right from the get-go that the system is broken. The level of “makes you think” that this film operates around is akin to some of the best episodes of Law & Order: SVU, where the justice system is portrayed as great in theory, but imperfect and not fully black-and-white when it matters most.
Personally, I do wish Dirty Harry had more screentime in the film, but what we do get, I really enjoyed watching. His quick quips are always fun, including the line I’m still trying to figure out where he says, “Nobody, I mean nobody, puts ketchup on a hot dog.” The guy he’s talking to is like, “What are you talking about?” because yeah... what are you talking about? Everyone puts ketchup on a hot dog! It’s the primary topping! I also put mustard on it, sometimes some chili and cheese, sometimes some jalapeños, maybe some onions. Okay... now I’m getting hungry. There’s very little I won’t put on a hot dog, okay?
But yeah, most of the time that he’s taking out the bad guys, it’s these random scenes where people are trying to take him out because earlier in the film he accidentally spooked a crime boss into a heart attack. It’s very random and not connected to anything other than kicking the story into gear for him to investigate a smaller homicide, which turns into this serial killing vigilante plot. So, throughout the movie, while Sondra Locke is doing her thing, Dirty Harry low-key is also avoiding being murdered by multiple people. I feel like this is just to keep the action going, and it works, but it’s a little bit of uneven storytelling.
Overall, this is one of the funner Eastwood films I’ve seen throughout this experience. Out of the ten that I’ve seen so far from the total of forty I will be watching, I have this as my third best. It was that entertaining for me, but it’s still an imperfect film at the end of the day.
Unbiased/Technical Score: 36/50 (72%)
Biased/Entertainment Score: 37/50 (74%)
Overall Total Score: 73/100 (73% or 3.5/5 on Letterboxd)