Normally, it’s a sign to start worrying when an actor takes over directing his own franchise. Consider Sylvester Stalone’s input for both Rocky and Rambo. Of course there are always exceptions to the rule, actor-directors who prove this hyphenate is something more than just a heightened chance at the actor-driven Oscars – and the greatest exception is Clint Eastwood. For as much as I spoke in glowing terms earlier of Clint the actor, so I must now speak in glowing terms of Eastwood the director. For here we have an artist, truly, an entirely self-assured and stately storyteller, endlessly furthering career-wide themes of masculinity and violence.
Naturally, such commentary must mean that today’s subject, Sudden Impact, is the work of Eastwood the director even while it is a Clint starring vehicle. Even by 1983, Eastwood was a mightily accomplished director – he was even before Dirty Harry was made, with the atypical Hitchcock homage Play Misty For Me. And once Sudden Impact was on the scene, Eastwood had at least one true classic under his directorial belt – The Outlaw Josey Wales (I could hear an argument for High Plains Drifter too). So really, in a remarkably skilled career that would go on to create Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby and Letters From Iwo Jima, there is as much reason to consider Sudden Impact in that context as it does to think of it simply as the fourth Dirty Harry movie.
Of course the franchise was good and seven years dead in 1983, with no immediate plans for resurrection. But then Warner Brothers, understanding the new decade’s sudden deadly case of sequelitis, performed an audience poll to test the waters for a fourth Harry. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and thus a movie was put into production, with Eastwood at the helm as actor, director, producer and possibly gaffer (he wasn’t yet up to scoring his films by then). The result, from a Joseph C. Stinson screenplay, is a ridiculously mixed film. At times, this is a serious and mature movie that returns the franchise to its 1971 roots, and then some, with grit and verve to match a new examination of vigilante justice. At other times, it is the same stupidly violent action flick that was exemplified by The Enforcer – which dared ask the eternal question, “Hippies, should we kill them?” It’s sort of the same mixed-bag issue as with Magnum Force, but with the added element that director Eastwood’s particular hang-ups are present as well – I’d almost say it’s better than Magnum Force…almost.
It is dusk on the furthest seaside outskirts of San Francisco, and a couple is going at it in a car. Eastwood’s exceedingly dark, noir-tinted imagery, and Lalo Schifrin’s equally moody musical funkadaciousness, clue us in that things are not as they should be. Indeed, soon enough the female participant produces a handgun, and performs what a crime scene investigator later tactfully refers to as “a .38 vasectomy.” One, yee-ouch!, and two, I’m amazed by how tasteful Eastwood is able to make such an act. Compare it to the opening of the dreaded Ilsa.
Our reintroduction to Clint’s Harry Callahan happens in court, Harry wearing The Terminator’s Gargoyle sunglasses indoors. Ah, whatever, Harry’s enough of a badass to get away with both this and hideous tweed jackets. In a regrettably familiar moment, a sickly liberal judge tosses out a case of murder due to Harry’s police work by way of Tyrannosaurus. A trio of tittering, vapid thugs, truly three punks, is nearly Scott free when Harry harasses them in the elevator.
All this is a perfectly adequate intro to Harry Callahan, but it’d only really be enough if we saw Harry blasting punks away with his noble Magnum. It’ll have to be several different punks, so it’s off to the local diner for Harry. Here said punks are enacting an early version of Pulp Fiction’s opening (later scenes obviously inspired Kill Bill), robbing the diner. Harry has them clearly outmanned, with “Smith, Wesson and me.” He blows most of them straight to Inferno, but he has something even better in mind for the last punk – one of the absolute greatest movie lines of all time:
“Go ahead, make my day.”
This line is noteworthy enough to have its own Wikipedia page, and all this in a movie most people don’t even remember. It’s kind of amazing, actually, with so many “Yippee kay-yays” and “I’ll be backs,” how Harry’s never reused a one-liner across films…He does have, ostensibly, another notable line in here: Following any setback, Harry says “Swell.” Yeah.
Such openings are typical Harry fare, and they needn’t have any connection to the plot. Harry’s next seemingly isolated act of badassery, however, does jumpstart the plot – well, the stupid plot, the one not having to do with the murdered groin. See, Harry pays a visit to nebulous mob boss Threlkis (Michael V. Gazzo, The Godfather Part II’s Frank Pentangeli) at his granddaughter’s wedding reception. Harry issues various hoarsely-uttered threats, prompting Threlkis to go ahead and have a deadly heart attack right there beside his just-married granddaughter. Ha HA, the mere thought of Harry Callahan kills mobsters dead! This justifies the random action sequences to come, as Threlkis’ mob thugs (a different form of lowlife than punks) will make the occasional abortive attempts on Harry’s life – and themselves die en masse for their trouble.
It also more immediately earns Harry a trademark chewing out from his latest pigheaded supervisor (split between Bradford Dillman’s Captain Briggs and Michael Currie’s Lt. Donnelly, because no one man can hope to control Harry Callahan). Because firing or killing Harry isn’t an option, these exasperated politician policemen simply suggest Harry take a vacation.
Reiterating the return of a hardboiled, non-comic booky Harry, here’s a speech he gives reiterating his own sense of justice:
“No, this stuff isn’t getting’ to me. The knifings, the beatings, old ladies being bashed in the head for their Social Security checks, teachers being thrown out of a fourth-floor window because they don’t give As, that doesn’t bother me a bit. Or this job either. Having to wade through the scum of the city, being swept away by bigger and bigger waves of corruption, apathy and red tape. Nah, that doesn’t bother me.”
Meanwhile, we are introduced to Jennifer Spencer, played by regular Eastwood costar and long-term partner (despite her bizarre open marriage to a gay friend) Sondra Locke. We instantly recognize her as the penis-shooter. Given her position at the opening, we would be led to believe she is the villain, but that’s not really the case. The next set of scenes, which see her visiting her comatose, vegetable sister Elizabeth at the hospital, and then revisiting a seaside boardwalk, reveal the real truth: She’s the main character. This may be Clint’s franchise, but it’s Eastwood’s movie, and he’s more concerned with telling Jennifer’s drama than he is in running through the usual Dirty Harry motions with the Threlkis plot.
Jennifer’s visit to the boardwalk of San Paulo (really Santa Cruz, an enclave full of tofu-scrunching neo-hippies and banana slugs) triggers memory flashbacks. It’s now ten years earlier (that is, the year of Magnum Force), as Jennifer relives the combined gang-rape of herself and Elizabeth under the boardwalk. Individual close-ups of the assorted rapists reveal the narrative drive – Sudden Impact is the Dirty Harry variation on those rape-revenge flicks from the late ‘70s grindhouse scene (movies like I Spit on Your Grave and…Dirty Harry’s spiritual brother Death Wish). We’ll be reintroduced to these despicable rapists over the course of the flick, and Jennifer will shoot them all in the penises. And seeing as this is a Clint Eastwood movie (and thus, exploitation aside, forever in the “stately” mode), there is nothing in the repeated gang-rape flashbacks that is overly disturbing content wise, even while the cinematic tricks on display make it far more unpleasant than it would otherwise be.
Harry, meanwhile, has a run-in with three of Threlkis’ hoods while “on vacation” – that is, randomly wandering the seediest of all San Francisco’s docks. He kills them.
Donnelly chews Harry out.
Harry practices in a forested firing range, employing his ultra-special .44 Automag (for when a mere .44 Magnum ain’t awesome enough). Here is his good buddy Horace King – You were waiting for Albert Popwell’s traditional Dirty Harry role? Well, here it is.
Harry then has another nighttime action sequence, of next to no context. See how Harry’s storyline in this thing is rather half-baked? This time it’s punks, not thugs, in the form of those guys who got out of court due to Harry’s mistakes. So trying to murder him makes perfect sense then, I guess. They toss delicious Molotov cocktails, and then, with a single shot of his Magnum, Harry is able to send their car tumbling into the bay. Those of us following the franchise know how this immediately kills bad people.
One predictable chewing out later (How dare Harry defend his own life?!), and Donnelly has put Harry on Double Secret Vacation. Thus Harry shall relocate for the remaining narrative to San Paulo, the hometown of the “cock-shot stiff.” (These cops are all poets to a man.)
The very instant Harry arrives in San Paulo, he sees a typical Harry scenario – a criminal shooting it out with a cop. (I promise this movie gets better in the second half.) Harry instantly gives chase on foot, only the criminal gets his punk hands on – an ice cream motorcycle?! So Harry gives chase in – a retirement community shuttle?! What is this, a Roger Moore movie?! Oh well, I guess it’s been five minutes since an action sequence.
San Paulo’s Chief Jannings (Pat Hingle, Commissioner Gordon) chews Harry out for his audacity in capturing this criminal with zero casualties or even property damage. It must be so nice for Harry to be chewed out in a new location.
It’s time for Harry’s plot and Jennifer’s plot to collide, quite literally, as they run into each other while jogging (courtesy of Harry’s comic relief bulldog – don’t ask). Nothing can come of this now, for they go their separate ways.
As Harry has been sent to San Paulo to investigate George Wilburns’ murder (and only now do we learn the name of the de-penised man), he heads to the local dive bar to examine George’s former rape buddies. (There is a frame photo in the police station essentially rejoicing the entire rape gang, for one of these ne’erdowells is Captain Jannings’ son – which sorta justifies the stubborn pigheadedness of Jannings’ character.) And let me tell you, San Paulo’s beloved rape crew is a tremendously uncouth, loutish pile of boors, unschooled and proud of it – they’re the worst sort of people in the U.S. Amongst these asses is Kruger (Jack Thibeau). More importantly, though, is Ray Parkins (Audrie J. Neenan), who is actually a female, despite all evidence to the contrary, and of nebulous sexual orientation – she’s the one who arranged the rape for her six male buddies. She attempts a come-on to Harry, who rejects her rather decidedly: “Only with humans.” Boo-yah! Oh, and when Harry says George is dead, everybody laughs. These people all deserve to be shot repeatedly in the penises.
It’s taken long enough, but it’s about time for the real revengin’ to get underway – and with that started, this movie can really start to work. Jennifer, after much soul-searching, tails Kruger to the beach and confronts him with her .38. “You don’t remember me, do you?” Then begins the systematic de-penisification of Kruger!
Harry arrives at the beach, easily connecting the MO here with George. Jannings rejects this theory outright, mostly because that’s what supervisors in these movies do.
Ray, that disgusting, chinless, straight bull-dyke redheaded flannel-shirted hillbilly accessory to gang-rape that she is, has also figured out what’s going on. She phones up Las Vegas, getting in touch with the central villainous mastermind – Mick the Rapist (Paul Drake). I’m serious, the credits list this character as “Mick the Rapist,” so much does he self-identify with such a lifestyle. And I mean, really, look at the guy!
It’s nighttime in San Paulo, and Harry encounters Jennifer at a restaurant so that this movie can instigate its central relationship, nearly two thirds in. Dialogue that rather reminds me of hardboiled ‘40s noirs (the cinematography mostly pegs them as the other major inspiration here, along with rape-revenge movies). It becomes clear that Harry and Jennifer share a similar notion of justice and victims’ rights. You see, in this movie Jennifer is the vigilante and, unlike the death squad of Magnum Force, she’s in the right. I mean, she’s doing Darwin’s good work! And here the conflict, at least in Jennifer’s eyes, is that Harry is on to her. That shall come, eventually, but really, this is Jennifer’s story.
Harry returns to his hotel, has an encounter with another mobster, and kills him. This is the sudden end of that whole Threlkis subplot, which has been a bizarre embarrassment this entire time.
It’s time for another revenge groin mauling! This time it’s businessman Eddie, trapped in his garage and shot in both heads. Consider the shot below, and tell me this wouldn’t work better as a B&W 1940s noir piece ala Detour or Double Indemnity.
Mick the Rapist, for all his limited screen time, genuinely comes across as the seediest figure of this franchise since the detestable Scorpio Killer. He shows up at Ray’s front doorstep for an evening of swigging cheap swill, then potential rape (‘cause that’s just what he does). To that second intent, he punches Ray around a little bit. Then Harry Callahan shows up at the front door, so he punches Harry instead. Harry punches Mick. Harry punches Ray. Ray punches Mick. There’s punching all around, in a most satisfying and debased way, and then Harry hauls Mick’s rapist butt off to jail.
Men now gone, Jennifer enters. Ray, ever the world-class vulgarian, says perhaps her cleanest line in the whole movie: “So, the bitch is here. Tell me, how’s your slut sister?” And since Ray doesn’t have a penis (apparently), Jennifer shoots her breasts off, and then her face for good measure. I’d happily suspend biological science just this once to afford Ray a worse death, because she deserved to suffer (by the skewed morals of the rape genre, at least).
Harry meets Jennifer upon the pier, each of them done with their evening’s violent errands. Now, Harry’s had sex before in the franchise, but this is his first romance, and given the themes and emotions, it is decidedly not tacked-on. In fact, this might restore some of Jennifer’s shattered soul, exemplified by her Dorian Gray-esque painting. As a spoiler, she shall kill no more rapists in this, though that doesn’t keep Harry from committing many, many more murders.
Meanwhile, Mick the Rapist has been sprung from prison, presumably under Jannings’ wrongheaded desire to never punish any criminals. He then proceeds to Harry’s motel, intent upon his own rampage of viciousness (and possibly rape). Here is Horace, for no other reason than to satisfy the “black guy dies in a movie” trope. Mick the Rapist kills him. (By now, two randomly murder-happy thugs are in tow.)
Then they find Harry anyway, beat him mercilessly, toss his Magnum into the ocean, and dump Harry off the boardwalk. Hitting water, we’ve seen, is fatal to villains; with Harry, it just makes him mad!
Jennifer is back out running errands, and has gone to Jannings’ house to kill his son Alby. She hesitates when she discovers Alby is as much a vegetable as her own sister; Jannings explains how this came as a result of Alby’s guilt over the rape, and Jannings’ subsequent cover-up. (Nice town!) And here is Mick the Rapist, who has been actively blackmailing Jannings all this time. He takes Jennifer’s .38, and outright murders Jannings because, well, these movies have a quota to meet. “Don’t sweat it, it’s a freebie.”
Mick the Rapist and gang lug Jennifer below the nearby dock, and I needn’t say what they have in mind. Jennifer taunts Mick and his penis: “You’ll have to rape my dead body.” My goodness, this movie is dark in both tone and cinematography! It’s almost too much to bear, except for my undying faith in Eastwood. For throughout the movie, it’s somehow never exploitative.
Jennifer escapes, entirely of her own accord, and flees to the boardwalk’s carousel. Eastwood is in pure Hitchcockian mode, like 1/5th of all his films, and so this is a natural place for a modern (or ‘80s) reenactment of Strangers on a Train’s climactic scene. The lighting is down to the barest minimum that will still allow for legibility, which, combined with the carousel’s wild spinning, renders the scene either very effective or very distancing, depending upon the viewer. Screen caps are impossible here, as much as I’d like to.
The rapists chase Jennifer outside. They have her cornered when –
Yes. Yes! YES! It’s Harry, doing a dry run for Unforgiven! Really, this is the closest a Dirty Harry movie has come to being a western, .44 Automat replacing a Colt six shooter. If I had to pick a single best moment for the franchise, this might actually be it! (Eastwood is clearly doing his best Leone, which instantly wins me over – I love a western.)
The first two rapists prove nothing for Harry’s phallus gun, but Mick the Capitalized Rapist is another matter. He takes Jennifer hostage, much as Scorpio did that kid at Dirty Harry’s end, and Harry repeats his best entry one-liner, much as at Dirty Harry’s end: “Go ahead, make my day.” It bears repeating…“Go ahead, make my day.” So Harry shoots Mick (the Rapist). Many, many times. But that’s not enough, oh Lordie no! Mick falls off of the rollercoaster (he was on a rollercoaster, by the way), and impales upon a carousel unicorn! Paging Dr. Freud.
There’s one final strand to cover: Jennifer’s murder spree. Considering the police (who have conveniently waited until after the climax to show) have found the .38 on the Rapist’s body, it’s simple enough for Harry to peg the spree on him, writing Jennifer a clean ticket. That’s a rather nice ending (astoundingly, the happiest in this franchise), and smacks of as much redemption as most rape-revenge movies are capable of.
What fascinates me about Sudden Impact, in Eastwood terms, is how (as said) it rather predicts Unforgiven. We have the same aging iconic figure, the same questioning of violence for revenge, and the same sexual assault to kick things off. Given the later western, it’s clear a great movie could be made from these trappings – sadly, Sudden Impact is not that movie. Perhaps it was too early in Eastwood’s career to handle such weighty material, perhaps Clint the actor wasn’t quite old enough to function as he did in Unforgiven (Clint already has Peoples’ script to that film by 1983, and was nursing it until the right age). Perhaps as the fourth entry in a franchise, it is the wrong place to suddenly force such weighty matters upon the audience. It’s clear the movie, as a Dirty Harry picture, cannot entirely sustain the idea, hence all those weightless confrontations with thugs and punks. Still, viewing it as more than a Harry movie helps to improve one’s enjoyment.
Enjoying Sudden Impact never seems to be a humongous problem – yet again, this was the highest grossing Dirty Harry movie of them all, even after each movie before it had reached this plateau. This is something fairly unheard of, a franchise that can so consistently improve its box office time and again. (It’s not entirely rare, for offhand I can think of James Bond and Toy Story doing the same thing.) And while the other three movies each had an amount of influence on the nascent action genre, Sudden Impact had more – it is the opening act for all those gloriously cheesy ‘80s action flicks to directly follow. That, along with the notable maturity, suggests the Dirty Harry franchise had run its natural course. But there was still one more to come…
Related posts:
• No. 1 Dirty Harry (1971)
• No. 2 Magnum Force (1973)
• No. 3 The Enforcer (1976)
• No. 5 The Dead Pool (1988)
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