Sudden Impact (1983)

The only one of the five Dirty Harry films that Clint Eastwood directed as well as starred was Sudden Impact. I guess he figured he knew his most famous screen character best and what direction he wanted to take him in. In fact Sudden Impact was something of a feminist manifesto, if you can believe that coming from Clint Eastwood.In his usual style Dirty Harry gets a mob family really angry at him when he crashes a family dinner and says some really nasty things to mob boss Michael V. Gazzo causing him to have a heart attack and depart this mortal coil suddenly. It's decided to send him to the small coastal town of San Paulo on a case where some similar patterns have occurred.We know right away that it's Sondra Locke who is going around committing these homicides, including one in San Francisco that got Clint assigned to San Paulo in the first place. What we don't know is what Clint is going to do about it because her attitudes about criminals getting away with their crimes is the same as is. Only she's not a cop.Some of the same issues were faced in the second Dirty Harry film Magnum Force, but the results here are different. Believe me Locke has plenty of good reason to want these several people dead.Eastwood and Locke were involved at the time Sudden Impact was made. Normally Clint is the whole show in the Dirty Harry films, but Locke is given several good scenes by director Eastwood in Sudden Impact.As for the ending, let's say that the ending might well have been inspired by Agatha Christie's Murder On The Orient Express. If you've seen that, you know what happens here.

Sudden Impact (1983)

The winning lines were selected from a list of 400. Voting criteria included a nominated quote's cultural impact on the national lexicon and whether it was used to invoke the film in which it appeared. 041b061a72