Sudden Impact ** (1983, Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Pat Hingle, Bradford Dillman) – Classic Movie Review 3812

Producer-director-star Clint Eastwood’s suddenly much lower-impact 1983 action thriller is the fourth Dirty Harry film in a steadily declining series, following Dirty Harry (1971), Magnum Force (1973) and The Enforcer  (1976).

After a lengthy gap, Eastwood returns to the scene of the crimes and again stars as San Francisco’s renegade police detective, Inspector Harry Callahan, who this time chases Jennifer Spencer (Sondra Locke), the avenging killer of those murderous scumbag villains who raped her and her sister.

Written by Joseph C Stinson from a story by Earl S Smith and Charles B Pierce, it is a disappointingly formulaic cop action thriller, which gets by mostly on audience good will for Eastwood and Dirty Harry, and some intriguing rough edges. What are needed are more bursts of action and a more compelling story told with greater dynamism and drive.

Nevertheless, it is a well crafted affair, with cinematography by Bruce Surtees, score by Lalo Schifrin and production designs by Edward Carfagno.

It is famous as the film that used the catchphrase ‘Go ahead, make my day’. The sequence was filmed at a Burger Island restaurant in San Francisco, now a McDonald’s.

Smith and Pierce’s screenplay was written for a non-Dirty Harry film and re-written by Stinson into this Dirty Harry movie after Warner Bros told Eastwood they would be open to distributing another Dirty Harry film.

It is the last of six movies made by then real-life couple Eastwood and Locke.

Also in the cast are Pat Hingle, Bradford Dillman, Audrie J Neenan, Paul Drake, Jack Thibeau, Michael Currie, Joe Bellan, Bette Ford, Albert Popwell (in his fourth and final Dirty Harry appearance), Mark Keyloun, Kevyn Major Howard, Nancy Parsons, Wendell Wellman, Mara Corday, Riss McCubbin, Robert Sutton, Nancy Fish, Carmen Argenziano, Lisa Britt, Bill Reddick, Lios De Banzie, Matthew Child, Michael Maurer and Pat DuVal.

Eastwood, who directs himself as Harry for the first time (though he briefly took over on Dirty Harry when Don Siegel had flu), should really have called it a day as Callahan after this, but there was one more, fifth Dirty Harry film: The Dead Pool in 1988.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3812

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