# Sudden Impact

Sudden Impact is a 1983 film in which a rape victim is exacting revenge on her aggressors in a small town outside San Francisco. Dirty Harry, on suspension for angering his superiors (again), is assigned to the case.
    Directed by Clint Eastwood. Written by Joseph Stinson, based on a story by Earl E. Smith and Charles B. Pierce.

## Harry Callahan

* Listen, punk. To me, you're nothin' but dogshit, you understand? And a lot of things can happen to dogshit. It can be scraped up with a shovel off the ground. It can dry up and blow away in the wind. Or it can be stepped on and squashed. So take my advice and be careful where the dog shits ya!
* Do you know the emergency phone number for San Francisco General? Well, why don't you call them right now and have them send down an ambulance. Tell them there's two sorry-looking assholes here with multiple contusions and various abrasions and broken bones.

## Ray Parkins

* Give me what you got, twat-lips, before I give your face its first period.

## Dialogue

    Burly Detective: What do ya think, a gang hit, screwed-up drug score, unlucky John, or an unhappy love affair? Huh? Don't tell me this shit's gettin' to ya. Not Harry Callahan. Say it ain't so.
    Harry Callahan: No, this stuff isn't gettin' 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 a shit. That doesn't bother me a bit.
    Burly Detective: Come on, Harry. Take it easy.
    Harry Callahan: Or this job, either. Having to wade through the scum of this city, being swept away by bigger and bigger waves of corruption, apathy and red tape. Nah, that doesn't bother me. But you know what does bother me?
    Burly Detective: What?
    Harry Callahan: You know what makes me really sick to my stomach?
    Burly Detective: What?
    Harry Callahan: Is watching you stuff your face with those hot dogs. Nobody, I mean NOBODY puts ketchup on a hot dog.
    Crook: [during a diner robbery] What's you doing, you pighead sucka?
    Harry Callahan: Every day for the past ten years, Loretta there's been giving me a large black coffee; today she gives me a large black coffee, only it has sugar in it. A lotta sugar. I just came back to complain. Now, you boys put those guns down.
    Crook: Say what?
    Harry Callahan: Whoa...we're not just gonna let you walk out of here.
    Crook: Who's "we", sucka?
    Harry Callahan: [puts his coffee on the table] Smith...and Wesson...and me.
    [Harry shoots the crook and kills him, and a gunfight ensues which ends with Harry threatening a robber at gunpoint]
    Harry Callahan: Go ahead, make my day!
* Note: ranked #6 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema.
    Captain Briggs: [shouting] In more than 30 years of police work, this is the single, most OUTRAGEOUS transgression of authority I ever heard about. What the HELL did you think you were doing?
    Harry Callahan: My job.
    Captain Briggs: Is it your job, to harass and incite an old man into a heart attack?
    Harry Callahan: My job is to investigate homicide. That old man happens to be one of the biggest crime lords on the west coast. How the hell was I supposed to know he was gonna vapor-lock?
    Captain Briggs: But you hoped he would?
    Harry Callahan: The Doker case is mine. It was at a standstill. I was just trying to break it loose.
    Captain Briggs: Sure, with threats and intimidation!
    Harry Callahan: Any way possible!
    Captain Briggs: Are you aware that you have destroyed MONTHS - of intelligence & surveillance work? We're talking thousands of dollar, hundreds of man-hours? Special investigations has been BUSTING ITS ASS preparing a case against Threlkis.
    Harry Callahan: He would have just snaked his way out of it. Maybe we saved the taxpayers a little money.
    Captain Briggs: I ought to bust your ass down to traffic. Or better yet, kick it off the force! You're a dinosaur, Callahan. Your ideas don't fit today.
    Harry Callahan: Just what ideas are these? That murder's a crime? That it should be punished?
    Captain Briggs:[sneering] Hey, don't you lecture me, you son-of-a-bitch. You know who you're talking to, huh? You know MY record?
    Harry Callahan: Yeah. You're a legend in your own mind!
    Captain Briggs: Goddamn you, Callahan!
    Police Commissioner: Gentlemen, that's enough! Inspector, your methods are unconventional to say the least. Well, you get results. But often your successes are more costly to this department in terms of publicity & physical destruction than most other men's failures!
    Lt. Donnelly: Commissioner, now I...
    Police Commissioner: Please, Lieutenant! The press will have a field day with this latest escapade. There may be further civil & legal repercussions. As a matter of fact there may even be attempts at retaliation. I think it would be wise if the inspector took some time off.
    [Briggs nods approvingly]
    Jennifer Spencer: I saw the commotion the other day; you're either a cop or public enemy number one.
    Harry Callahan: Heh. Some people might say both.
    Jennifer Spencer: Really, who?
    Harry Callahan: Oh, bozos with big brass nameplates on their desk and asses the shape of the seat of their chairs.
    Jennifer Spencer: Why?
    Harry Callahan: Ah, it's a question of methods. Everybody wants results but nobody wants to do what they have to do to get them done.
    [Horace King fires two shotgun blasts at the target]
    Harry Callahan: Not bad.
    Horace King: Not bad, my ass! You've got to strain the remains for the fingerprints.
    Harry Callahan: Well, this is the .44 Magnum Auto-Mag and it hold a 300-grain cartridge. And, if properly used, it can remove the fingerprints.
    Jennifer Spencer: So what now?
    Harry Callahan: Now, I guess I'll have to...
    Jennifer Spencer: Read me my rights? And where was all this concern for my rights when I was being beaten and mauled? And where were my sister's rights when she was being brutalized? There is a thing called justice, Callahan, and is it justice that they should all just walk away?
    Chief Jannings: He couldn't live with it. The other vermin didn't care. But him, the guilt ate at his gut like an acid. He wanted you to come back. He would pray every night that you'd come back. Until one night he couldn't wait any longer. Took his car out and smashed it and his brains into a retaining wall. Now you're here, and he doesn't even know it. My fault. I should have let him be punished then, along with the other filth. But he was my only son. his mother died giving birth to him. He and I are all each other have. I was afraid for him. Afraid for me. See, I was a public figure. So I did things. I fixed it. And now I just want you to go. Let it end.
    Jennifer Spencer: There's one left.
    Chief Jannings: Yes. And I've got him, in my jail. He preyed on Alby and preyed on me ever since. And that too is going to end.
    Mick: [surprising them] Oh is that so, Lester boy?

## Taglines

* Dirty Harry is at it again.
* Two killers are at large. One of them is Dirty Harry.

## Cast

* Clint Eastwood - Insp. 'Dirty' Harry Callahan
* Sondra Locke - Jennifer Spencer
* Pat Hingle - Chief Lester Jannings
* Bradford Dillman - Captain Briggs
* Audrie J. Neenan - Ray Parkins
* Michael Currie - Lt. Donnelly
* Albert Popwell - Horace King
* Kevyn Major Howard - Hawkins
* Bette Ford - Leah
* Nancy Parsons - Mrs. Kruger

## See also

* Dirty Harry (1971)
* Magnum Force (1973)
* The Enforcer (1976)
* The Dead Pool (1988)

## External links

* Sudden Impact quotes at the Internet Movie Database
* Sudden Impact at Rotten Tomatoes