Sudden Impact (1983, Clint Eastwood)

At least a third of Sudden Impact is director, producer, and star Eastwood doing a Hitchcock homage starring Sondra Locke. Locke doesn’t speak during the Hitchcock homage sequences; she just walks silently, staring at various things, remembering her horrific origin story, then shooting some rapist in the balls and then the head. Now, Sudden Impact is Dirty Harry 4, coming seven years after the previous entry; Eastwood’s in his fifties now. There aren’t young chippies throwing themselves at him (I mean, Locke’s fourteen years younger, but she’s still a grown woman), but he’s still got to contend with unsympathetic police brass. They don’t understand how dangerous the world has become, and only a man like Dirty Harry can get results.

The movie opens with Locke offing her first rapist, but we don’t know he’s a rapist yet. She’s just killing some guy in a Hitchcock homage. Then it’s off to court for lady judge Lois De Banzie to disrespect Eastwood’s authority and let young punk Kevyn Major Howard back out on the street. Eastwood didn’t have any evidence. Then Eastwood goes and interrupts a coffee shop robbery where he kills the only four Black people in the movie so far, just before Locke has an interaction with some Hispanic toughs. Impact’s main villains will be all white, but the movie is determined to remind the audience cities are full of ethnic types who are just criminals.

Also, one of the main villains will be a lesbian. Audrie Neenan. She hopefully fired her agent after this one.

But we’re getting ahead because it takes Sudden Impact forty minutes to get the actual plot, which will be Eastwood investigating the secrets of coastal city “San Paulo” (filmed in Santa Cruz), where Locke just happens to have returned to kill all her assaulters. See, ten years before, Neenan brought coworker Locke to a party (along with Locke’s little sister) but as a set up for some local boys to rape them (occasionally under Neenan’s direction). Sudden Impact is Eastwood doing a seventies exploitation picture in the eighties, with the Hitchcock vibes, and then all Eastwood’s one-liners about how all those liberals, and intellectuals, and smooth-talkers don’t understand how policing needs to be done. From the business end of a very special .44 Magnum, because it’s the eighties, and there’s got to be some kind of tech angle to it.

Just to pad out the run time, Eastwood also stars a gang war with uncredited Michael V. Gazzo, so there can be lots of shootouts in scenic San Francisco. Eastwood, as a director, does a great job showcasing the locations. Impact’s got a great crew—Joel Cox’s editing is great, and Bruce Surtees’s photography is muted and lush—even if the action set pieces are a bit blah. It’s just Eastwood going from shootout to shootout. Occasionally, boss Bradford Dillman yells at him. Dillman’s back from the previous movie playing the same part but with a different character name. Eastwood’s only friend—his Black friend, no less—is played by Albert Popwell. Popwell’s back from the original Dirty Harry, where he was at the business end of a one-liner; apparently, since 1971, Eastwood rehabilitated him and turned him into a cop.

Better movie, no doubt.

Lalo Schifrin’s music varies from inspired to grating–his Hitchcock-y music for Locke’s great. The opening music’s weird, though, especially since the titles are an homage to The Maltese Falcon’s San Francisco Bay shots. Shame Eastwood didn’t realize they could’ve nodded towards movies with good stories for the plotting.

He’s not good. He’s bored all of the time, annoyed some of it. The director’s cut must be about him having to pass bladder stones. Locke’s awesome during her silent walking around scenes. Once she’s got to talk, she’s terrible. Except when she’s got the exploitative but prestige scene where she tells her catatonic sister how she killed the first rapist. From that scene, it seems like Locke will have some pay-off dramatically.

Not so.

Not even after Eastwood gives her an excellent thriller chase sequence on a carousel.

By the third act, Impact’s gotten over its intentional casual racism and dog whistling. It seems like there’s nothing anyone can do to stop the momentum, especially not after that great thriller sequence. But then it turns out Eastwood had one more homage up his sleeve; for some inexplicable reason, which either has a great story or a tragic coincidence, Eastwood directs his Dirty Harry action scenes like he’s the slasher in a slasher movie.

So bad.

Then it’s nice the end titles have a Roberta Flack song, but it’s not a good Roberta Flack song. Sudden Impact makes some very intentional references to the previous Dirty Harry movies, but only their very seventies technical choices.

Again, the whole thing’s fascinating. But certainly not rewarding. Certainly not any good.

There is—eventually—a cute bulldog, however. Though Eastwood really leans in on bulldog’s farting. Uncomfortably so.

Full Metal Jacket (1987, Stanley Kubrick)

Full Metal Jacket is a film of big swings. Director and co-writer Kubrick hits them all. The three most prominent are the structure, the character study, and the whole arc. The structure and arc are different because the film's got two distinct sections. Minutes one to forty-five or so is a "We're in the Marines Now!," anti-propaganda picture slash character examination (not study), and the rest is a "Week in the Life" picture, just for Marines in 1968 Vietnam.

That rest is split into two parts, a survey of the Vietnam War through the very focused eyes of Marine "Stars and Stripes" reporter and then an impossibly taut war action sequence for the third act. Both parts share a narrator: Matthew Modine. And Modine's the protagonist, in a traditional sense. The story follows Modine from boot camp and his experiences there to Vietnam and his experiences there. Modine passively brings the new characters into the film, with Kubrick often—gently—shifting the narrative focus to follow another character for a while here and there. Or maybe Kubrick just makes Modine too good an observer, and personalities take over the focus.

It's precise pacing, plotting, and cutting. For a while, in the first twenty minutes or so, Kubrick even allows the film to be playful. Always serious, but there will be a particular cut during a specific pop song, and it's just to create a positive coincidence. Because the first half of the film is harrowing. Modine and his fellow recruits suffer under their drill instructor, R. Lee Ermey, for their eight weeks in boot camp, without any character development for the recruits outside their training. At the very end, there's a tie-in reveal for Modine, which sets him up for the second half, but it's the last few minutes. Otherwise, behaviors inform Modine's character, not exposition. So we're watching him and seeing the character change without knowing where he's starting. Same for Arliss Howard, who gets some minor reveals in the second half, giving his personal arc a little more tragic vibe. And, then, of course, for Vincent D'Onofrio.

The first half of Full Metal Jacket is about D'Onofrio not doing well during training, Ermey abusing him, and how it affects the other recruits. Except for his inclusion in the opening montage of guys getting their buzz cuts, Jacket will only show D'Onofrio from other characters' perspectives, whether in scene or through editing, until the last ten minutes of part one. We see how other people see D'Onofrio, and Kubrick only ever allows the briefest peek along the way.

Ermey assigns D'Onofrio to Modine because Modine's a smart-mouth, making Modine responsible for D'Onofrio's success. And D'Onofrio does succeed (for a while), and Kubrick shows all the working to those successes in montage. He only shows the most objective scenes, just subjectively selects them, which actually sums up the film overall as far as style. The film moves over the existing narrative, pausing for specific events, ignoring almost all others. Because there's room for more traditional character development, Kubrick just doesn't want it there.

When the film reintroduces Modine in part two, now in Vietnam and reasonably successful as a "Stars and Stripes" reporter, reestablishing the ground situation includes information not revealed in the first half. The film held back the information to let Modine's physical performance inform the later reveal. It's so good. Kubrick and company's character work in the second half is phenomenal and completely different from in part one.

Modine's sympathetic in part one, funny in part one; he's not likable until part two. Because it doesn't matter if he's likable. Even after he's likable.

Part two has Modine and new sidekick Kevyn Major Howard on assignment in the war zone just after the Tet Offensive. There are no history lessons in Full Metal Jacket, with the film skimming over Modine trying to get boss John Terry to cover rumors about it and Terry blowing him off. There's no "ah-ha" moment. There are never insight moments for Modine. Even when he gets interviewed for the news back home. The other characters reveal something. Modine doesn't.

There's also a short, superior Tet Offensive war movie sequence, which ought to be having significant effects on Modine, but Kubrick won't show it. The protagonist and narrator is a mystery as far as details. But they don't matter because even with more exposition and details, Kubrick focuses on the physical performances, not the dialogue exchanges.

Modine and Howard meet up with Howard, now in the infantry, and tag along with his squad. The squad gets an introduction sequence, with Dorian Harewood and Adam Baldwin being the most prominent. Baldwin's a loud-mouth racist, and Harewood's his Black best friend. There's a lot of racism on display in Full Metal Jacket, even as the characters explain they just hate everyone. One of the themes is how some of them figure out why that equation doesn't work, though only for the Asian Vietnamese, not their Black compatriots. It's simultaneously a defect and just more character development.

The third act is Modine and the squad on patrol. It's very third act—almost epilogue—and spectacular action filmmaking. Kubrick does this whole thing with the sunset and tying it back to other night scenes (there are only a few). But just superb direction. And cutting and lighting and sound and so on.

And the music. Wow, the music. Vivian Kubrick (with a pseudonym) does the music. There's not a lot of it, but it's exceptionally well-done. The pop music soundtrack's great too, with Kubrick letting himself have a little fun for the end credits in particular.

Incredible photography from Douglas Milsome, production design from Anton First. Martin Hunter's editing is actually divine. He makes some peerless cuts in Jacket. Kubrick's direction is always great. It's a spectacular well-made motion picture, as well as a superlative one overall.

The best acting is D'Onofrio. There are some really good short performances, and the main cast for part two is all excellent. Ed O'Ross, Kieron Jecchinis, and Bruce Boa all get single standout scenes. They may be in more of the movie, but they get single spotlights. Main players get more—Modine, Baldwin, Harewood, then two Howards (no relation).

In the first half, Ermey's great too. It's hard to describe how Ermey exists in the film. Like everyone else, he's a caricature, but not. Broadly put, he's more a force of nature than anything else, but he's also very much not. Not even when Kubrick could use him like one. D'Onofrio's the best performance, but Ermey's the best-directed performance. Kubrick does something really singular with Ermey.

Full Metal Jacket's great. It's never not unpleasant, but also never not exceptional.