Sudden Impact (DVD)

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Good
Special Effects	Standard
Soundtrack	Average

Advantages:	Trots along at a good pace, pretty compelling
Disadvantages:	Very violent at times, arguably condones vigilanteism

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

'Dirty' Harry Callahan, a San Francisco cop, has got himself into trouble with his bosses yet again, so they take the opportunity of an out of city case to get him out of the way for a while. A man has been found shot dead in his car and Harry needs to find out who does it, especially when it looks as if the killing is part of a series. Unfortunately, the local police chief isn't overwhelmed to see him. Then Harry becomes involved with Jennifer, a woman who, along with her sister, was brutally raped ten years earlier. Jennifer is badly scarred; her sister even more so - she is practically catatonic and living in an institution. As the killings continue, Harry must work out if Jennifer has anything to do with them and, if she does, work out what he is going to do with her.

This is the fourth of the Dirty Harry movies, yet is the only one that I have seen. Although very familiar with the term 'Dirty Harry', for some reason the films seemed to have escaped my radar, although as a criminologist, I am very familiar with Dirty Harry being held up to represent vigilanteism, so I had a fairly good idea what to expect. This film may be the fourth in the series, but if the previous ones are half as good as this one, I'll be more than happy to watch them.

As Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood is fantastic. He is lean and mean, yet because he is on the side of right (rather than the law), he manages to get away with a whole host of reasons to beat the sh*t out of everyone who gets in his way. Even I like him, and I am usually very anti anything that smacks of vigilanteism - I find the idea of a society taking the law into their own hands when they don't know the whole truth (more often than not anyway) extremely scary and this does not preclude the police doing the same. In the case of this film though, I was more than happy for him to do things in his own way.

Sondra Locke is also great as Jennifer. To start with, she looks the part - there is something very fragile and washed out about her that immediately made me want to look after her and I am sure the majority of the audience would feel the same. She does have an edge to her that makes her less pitiful though and I was more than glad for her to have an edge. There is one scene when she gets her revenge on one of her rapists (note that I don't say what the revenge is - I'm not giving anything away here!), when I leapt up from my seat and was shrieking at the television because I really wanted her to do some harm! That is always the sign of a good performance for me - when I so totally feel for someone that I don't condone what they are doing, right or not - and in this film, both Sondra Locke and Clint Eastwood inspired this feeling in me.

Rape is always an emotive issue for a film, particularly when it is as brutal as the one that Jennifer and her sister went through - and we are shown this in flashbacks. I thought that the way the film shows the harm that it leaves after the event was very well done. It is all too easy to forget that such a violent attack is going to leave the victims with nightmares for ever more - in this case, it has left Jennifer's sister unable to manage for herself.

Dirty Harry has long been held up as a 'hero' for those who don't condone vigilanteism. I can't speak for the other films, but in this one, he certainly does act against the law, leaving a string of bodies behind him, and it is easy to see why the Dirty Harry films are criticised for inspiring violence in others. I think the important thing to note here is that for starters, this is a film and not reality and secondly, that Harry knew the whole truth and not just part of it - unlike, for example, cases where members of the public have attacked or even killed people they mistakenly believed were paedophiles. In any case, it has still not been conclusively proved that watching a film can provoke a violent reaction in the audience, although I personally suspect that in some cases, it can do.

All that aside, this is a really entertaining film that kept me glued to the screen from start to finish. As well as starring in the film, Clint Eastwood has done a great job of the direction, dripping parts of the story out slowly so that the pacing is kept even and I never once felt bored. There is a great deal of violence though and the classification of 18 is about right, although I appreciate that not many people take much notice of film classifications these days, so if you don't like violence, you won't like this. Otherwise, recommended and it is not necessary to have watched any of the other Dirty Harry films first.

The DVD is available from play.com for £5 with free delivery.

Classification: 18

Running time: 1 hour, 57 minutes.