Sudden Impact

This fourth outing from Clint Eastwood’s “Callaghan” is my least favourite. By now we are more than used to this curmudgeonly inspector, and his disdain for just about every aspect of authority he encounters so we are hardly surprised when his latest ruthless example of law enforcement sees carnage all around, the city looking at hefty bills and him with a price on his head. “Capt. Briggs” (Bradford Dillman) decides to get him out of harm’s way just as, coincidentally, a serial killer is terrorising a small town. Now equipped with an even more power-packing Magnum, he sets about investigating just why these people are being violently murdered. We, watching, know all along who is doing the killing and just why but what we don’t necessarily expect is that when the policeman discovers their identity, too, he begins to have a grudging respect for the killer that might end up compromising his otherwise iron-rod peacekeeping integrity. Meantime, as that investigation gathers pace “Callaghan” has to worry about the mob he had previously brought to book - and who are trying every trick in the book to exact their revenge. Maybe I’m just sanitised to the pithy one-liners and brutality of these stories, now, but this one also has the weakest storyline and the supporting characters leave it lacking much punch. Perfectly watchable, but not a patch on “Dirty Harry” from a decade earlier.