After seven years away from his most iconic character, Clint Eastwood returned to the role of San Francisco cop Inspector Harry Callahan. And, for the first half hour at least, "Sudden Impact" promises to be the best Dirty Harry movie since Don Siegel's brilliant 1971 original.
We get to see Harry deliver some hilarious put-downs to a group of thugs (or "punks" as he hisses at them) who are taunting him in an elevator after being acquitted in court. There is finally a line of dialogue to match the "Do I feel lucky?" line from the first movie. It's the classic: "Go ahead...make my day." And Harry gets a cool, new Magnum pistol, a weapon even more powerful that his Magnum .44 (why he'd want a weapon more powerful than that is anyone's guess. Maybe it's because he's after a group of baddies this time instead of one like Scorpio or maybe Clint was getting a lot of money from the Magnum gun company for product placement.) He keeps it in a special presentation box, but, when the villains sink to new lows, Harry's eye begins twitching in the direction of his new gun and...well, you can guess what happens next!
Once Harry is sent on vacation and gets mixed up in a rape revenge plot involving Sondra Locke, the film nosedives and never recovers (although Harry does acquire a charming, farting bulldog called Meathead).
The gang-rape scenes are repeated over and over in flashbacks and they seem to go on forever and Eastwood really goes too far as a director with it all. He has directed much better movies than this one and I don't think "Sudden Impact" would be in his top ten somehow.
The baddies in this film are just a bunch of leering, wild-eyed psychos with none of the complexity of the Scorpio killer from the first film. Perhaps this is to make the audience not care about them as they are castrated by bullet and then murdered. (There is a particularly grotesque foul-mouthed, butch lesbian character among the group of rapists who is like something out of a John Waters movie. It's a relief when her character isn't around).
Harry has clearly changed his mind about vigilante justice from the days of "Magnum Force" ten years earlier. In that film, he refused to join a cabal of vigilante cops with the line: "I'm afraid you've misjudged me." In this film, Harry Callahan is essentially an accomplice to a vigilante killer and an accessory to murder. The film has the dodgy moral message that it's okay to be a vigilante if the crime you're avenging is bad enough. Harry is reduced to being a clone of the Charles Bronson character from the "Death Wish" movies, mowing down villains by the truckload. The script never questions the actions of the Sondra Locke character who is presented as a sort of feminist martyr.
The rape revenge story was not a Dirty Harry script when it started out and Eastwood tried to fashion it into one and it doesn't work (perhaps Clint just wanted to make a Dirty Harry movie with Sondra Locke, God knows she was in every other film he'd made for almost ten years by that stage). The "Sudden Impact" script does not have the razor-sharp focus that the first film had from start to finish and it's frustrating that they came so close to matching it and gave up.
The film gets increasingly ridiculous and nasty as it goes on until it just peters out. You are kind of glad when its over as its a little embarrassing for all concerned. No wonder Clint doesn't want to make anymore Dirty Harry films, he's gone as far as he can with the character of Harry Callahan.
We get to see Harry deliver some hilarious put-downs to a group of thugs (or "punks" as he hisses at them) who are taunting him in an elevator after being acquitted in court. There is finally a line of dialogue to match the "Do I feel lucky?" line from the first movie. It's the classic: "Go ahead...make my day." And Harry gets a cool, new Magnum pistol, a weapon even more powerful that his Magnum .44 (why he'd want a weapon more powerful than that is anyone's guess. Maybe it's because he's after a group of baddies this time instead of one like Scorpio or maybe Clint was getting a lot of money from the Magnum gun company for product placement.) He keeps it in a special presentation box, but, when the villains sink to new lows, Harry's eye begins twitching in the direction of his new gun and...well, you can guess what happens next!
Once Harry is sent on vacation and gets mixed up in a rape revenge plot involving Sondra Locke, the film nosedives and never recovers (although Harry does acquire a charming, farting bulldog called Meathead).
The gang-rape scenes are repeated over and over in flashbacks and they seem to go on forever and Eastwood really goes too far as a director with it all. He has directed much better movies than this one and I don't think "Sudden Impact" would be in his top ten somehow.
The baddies in this film are just a bunch of leering, wild-eyed psychos with none of the complexity of the Scorpio killer from the first film. Perhaps this is to make the audience not care about them as they are castrated by bullet and then murdered. (There is a particularly grotesque foul-mouthed, butch lesbian character among the group of rapists who is like something out of a John Waters movie. It's a relief when her character isn't around).
Harry has clearly changed his mind about vigilante justice from the days of "Magnum Force" ten years earlier. In that film, he refused to join a cabal of vigilante cops with the line: "I'm afraid you've misjudged me." In this film, Harry Callahan is essentially an accomplice to a vigilante killer and an accessory to murder. The film has the dodgy moral message that it's okay to be a vigilante if the crime you're avenging is bad enough. Harry is reduced to being a clone of the Charles Bronson character from the "Death Wish" movies, mowing down villains by the truckload. The script never questions the actions of the Sondra Locke character who is presented as a sort of feminist martyr.
The rape revenge story was not a Dirty Harry script when it started out and Eastwood tried to fashion it into one and it doesn't work (perhaps Clint just wanted to make a Dirty Harry movie with Sondra Locke, God knows she was in every other film he'd made for almost ten years by that stage). The "Sudden Impact" script does not have the razor-sharp focus that the first film had from start to finish and it's frustrating that they came so close to matching it and gave up.
The film gets increasingly ridiculous and nasty as it goes on until it just peters out. You are kind of glad when its over as its a little embarrassing for all concerned. No wonder Clint doesn't want to make anymore Dirty Harry films, he's gone as far as he can with the character of Harry Callahan.