Post by Eddie Love on Feb 5, 2011 11:11:44 GMT -5
A gorgeous undercover narc lies dead in a Times Square apartment. Her killer is in custody after a long and bizarre standoff -- and he’s a cop himself. That’s how things stand after the climax of REPORT TO THE COMMISIONER, but it’s also where the film begins as we trace the events that brought the two to their tragic nexus and explore the tangled motivations of the brass on the force in this uneven, but, at times, pretty powerful forgotten cop thriller from the 70s.
Seventies beauty Susan Blakely plays an ambitious and dedicated member of New York’s Finest, street name: Chicklet. She’s breaking records with her collars and is deep enough into the street life and close enough to a pusher named “The Stick” that she feels she can successfully infiltrate his guns and dope rackets by moving in with him and essentially living as his girlfriend. The notion of this blue-eyed, blond, all-American hottie shacking up with a black hustler while on the job makes her superiors more than a little nervous. To ensure the operation doesn’t blow up in their faces, they decide to add some gloss to “Chicklet’s” runaway back-story by having young plains-clothes detective Bo Lockley (Michael Moriearty) scour the streets of Times Square looking for her. Lockley ‘s a second generation cop brought up the ranks as the force needs young officers to deal with the radical youth and drug culture in the city. But the highly empathetic Bo may be wound too tight for the assignment, despite the best mentoring efforts of his street-smart partner “Crunch” (Yaphett Kotto).
Michael Moriarty was, along with John Savage and Jon Voight, the pastey, white alternative to the Pacinos and DeNiros burning up 70s movie-houses. He was a critically acclaimed star who triumphed on stage and screen as well as TV. (These days I understand he’s an Obama-hating, right-wing blogger. Go figure.) Here he gives a performance that’s extremely compelling even as it’s often wildly over-the-top. I’m not certain how well served he is by the director, for while his scenes in the aftermath of the shooting are pitch-perfect, they’re undercut by our memory of his freaking-out so much earlier in the movie. He has one long scene where he braces a pimp (coolly played in his debut by Richard Gere!) where Moriarty is all over the place. We have no idea why he’s so totally unhinged at this point in the story. And frankly, his repeated deadpan query of “Where’s Chicklet?’ quickly becomes kind of humorous.
Speaking of which, the film would have benefited from more scenes from Blakely’s perspective, as her character is a bit too enigmatic. The rest of the cast is sturdy and effective, made up of reliable 70s mainstays and some surprising new faces. In addition to Gere, William Devane and Bob Balaban also turn up in early roles. Balaban plays a legless street person and he’s the center of one strangely protracted sequence where he tails Chicklet on Bo’s behalf.
The best performance in the cast comes from Kotto as the cop who knows all the angles and tries to show Bo the streets. He initially begrudges the assignment, but takes a liking to Bo as he recognizes the young man is being brought onto the force for much the same reason that black officers like himself were – to bust their brothers. Kotto is great in the scenes where he shows Bo the score, and beautifully effective in showing his growing sympathy for his partner. And this film deserves credit for being one of the few from the period I can think of where a white and a black guy sit down and talk about racial issues, as Bo quizzes Crunch in a bar about his use of the “n-word” and why he’s out rousting blacks for the man. That’s a great scene, you wish the whole of the movie were as strong.
This picture is based on a neat documentary style novel that told the story through memos, police forms, newspaper stories and interrogation transcripts. There’s an attempt to replicate that sense here, but it’s somewhat half-hearted. We occasionally know when the story is based on a specific character’s recollections, but at other times we’re entirely unsure whose point of view we’re following.
On the whole, the film is somewhat stylistically vacant. It doesn’t have the lean, austerity of Sidney Lumet, nor does it have the rhythmic flavor or a film meant to capture the pulse of the street. It’s potent, yet somewhat character-less, a fact that’s reflected in an oddly ineffective Elmer Bernstein score that shifts between ominous chords one minute and then the pulse-pounding, background you would expect in standard cop fare. Given the film’s ostensibly documentary feel, this undercuts it somewhat.
However, even if the film doesn’t hit the high notes of FRENCH CONNECTION or SERPICO, it increasingly picks up steam and by the end it fully satisfies, even if you wish it could have been tougher and more realistic. (It was saddled with a PG rating that may have clipped its wings somewhat.) Although, one of the highlights of this film is the location shooting throughout the Times Square area. The bygone era of NYC in the 70s is all here. (Even if it’s a bit distracting to see large crowds quite clearly milling around for no other reason than to watch this film being made.)