SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

I really tried to like this movie. In fact, I was excited to get it for a number of reasons: Robert Duvall, an Eddie Egan vehicle, and it being an early 1970's cop movie filmed in New York City. Many of the things I like. But I was sorely disappointed. I just don't follow the attraction to this film. In the wake of such Seventies superstar films like 'Dirty Harry', 'The French Connection', and 'Shaft' among others ('The Seven-Ups' is a great example of a lesser known film but equally as exciting), 'Badge 373' is a slow-moving, poorly acted, long, uninspiring, and less than memorable movie which surprisingly detours half-way through. Duvall is at best fair and Egan is painful in watching him deliver his robotic lines. Direction by Howard Koch is unimaginative and dark in many areas. A fairly exciting chase sequence involving a NYC transit bus along with a decent performance by Verna Bloom as Duvall's long suffering girlfriend, some noticeable non-PC slurs and a decent aerial view of lower Manhattan gives this movie its only credibility.

In watching Badge 373 I can't believe that Pete Hamill normally a trenchant observer of New York's social and political scene could write such a mediocre film. If you're an action junkie you'll like it and if you're not politically correct you'll love it.Hamill really let his own views get the better of him here. The dirty little secret about the Independista movement in Puerto Rico is how little support it does command. If you were to take this film as gospel you would believe that the entire South Bronx was a hotbed of revolutionary activity.In a film that was inspired by real life New York detective Eddie Eagan, the inspiration also for Gene Hackman's Popeye Doyle in The French Connection, Robert Duvall during a police raid chased a junkie suspect up to a roof where he fell in trying to apprehend him. Of course there were accusations that Duvall helped him along. It wasn't true, but the accusations were enough to force a suspension and departmental inquiry. Truth also be told Duvall hasn't got the kindest feeling toward the Latino community and they know it.While he's on suspension and working as a bartender, Duvall's partner Louis Cosentino is killed and Duvall though he's suspended and carries no badge or gun decides to investigate on his own. Quite frankly there was no reason not to let the NYPD handle the shooting of one of their own. But Duvall misses the action and wants blood.He gains access to information through bluff and bluster without the badge, but he sure has reason to regret not carrying some kind of piece before the film is over. He's lucky to survive and remedy what he should have done in the first place. John Wayne in McQ was smart enough to hire out to a friend's private investigation firm so he would have cover to carry a weapon, why didn't Duvall think of that?And then the idiot compounds it all by involving poor Verna Bloom, a waitress he's been keeping company with in his pursuit of arch criminal Henry Darrow. Duvall gets her killed quite unnecessarily. Bloom and Darrow give the best performances in Badge 373.I can't believe that Eddie Eagan himself gave some kind of official imprimatur by appearing in this. I suppose he might have owed Pete Hamill a favor. Duvall was coming off his Academy Award nominated performance in The Godfather and Badge 373 was quite a comedown. It had potential to be better, but I think only action junkies will really like this film.

**SPOILERS** Tough talking and hard hitting undercover NYPD cop Eddie Ryan, Robert Duvall, goes a bit too far by working over this innocent Puerto Rican party goer whom he causes to jump to his death off a six floor building. This all happens in the first five minutes in the film "Badge 373", Eddie Ryan's police badge number, during an outrageous bust of a Puerto Rican social club where the worst thing going on there is a little pot smoking by some of the party goers.Suspended from the police department Eddie soon gets involved with this nationalist Puerto Rican group from the Bronx who are in the process of starting an armed revolt in their homeland. Supplied by a Harvard educated Puerto Rican hoodlum called Sweet William, Henry Darrow, the revolutionaries are expecting a shipment of over $3,000,000.00 in arms to achieve their aim.It turns out almost by accident that Eddie's partner officer Gigi Caputo, Louis Cusentino, got involved with this hooker Rita Garcia, Marina Dorell, while he was on suspension that lead to Gigi's murder. Gigi through Rita somehow got in cahoots with both Sweet William and the Puerto Rican revolutionaries and became a willing accomplice in their arms running racket. Eddie making it a point to avenge his late partners murder gets his unsuspecting girlfriend Maureen,Verna Bloom, involved with his personal crusade that in the end gets her killed as well by the revolutionaries.Eddie for his part goes all out, without a badge or the authority behind it, to stop Sweet William and his Puerto Rican revolutionaries headed by Rita's brother Ruban played by Fellipe Luciano, one of the founders of the Young Lords, from accomplishing their aims. During the course of the film Eddie gets worked over by the revolutionaries who after a wild car bus chase who, despite Eddie putting some dozen of them away, just put him in the hospital with a couple of broken bones.The film comes to it's very predictable final with Eddie getting the lowdown to where the arms supply is to be loaded on to, a freighter in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Catching the freighter's crew with it's pants down Eddie has them panic where Sweet William in a fit of insane rage guns down a totally befuddled Ruban Garcia who was killed just for having an emotional breakdown! Ruban just lost it's when the boat took off without the precious arms on board. Sweet Williams then wildly shoots up the fleeing freighters crew who had finally realized just what a bunch of lunatics, Sweet Williams & Co, that they were dealing with.With the entire Brooklyn North police force showing up at the port all they could do is just watch Eddie climb up, on a 150 foot crane, after a hysterical and totally out of it Sweet William for the films final and talky showdown. We get the usual BS story from Sweet Williams in how he lived better then any of those, the perusing cops, ever dream of living. Sweet William also hints that he'll be back,dead or alive, to continue the revolution even if it ends up killing him! This brain numbing harangue goes on and on until Eddie, with Sweet William unarmed and no threat to anyone, finally blows him away just to stop Sweet William from talking Eddie the police and movie audience to death with his boring and endless dialog.Sub-par "French Connection" follow up with the real hero of the "French Connection" Eddie Egan, as Eddie Ryan's friend and boss Lt. Scanlon, in the cast. Robert Duvall was a bit hard to take as suspended policeman Eddie Ryan taking on persons, by two's three's and even four's, twice as big as he is. Henry Darrow as ex-Puerto Rican hood and now full time freedom fighter Sweet William was a lot more effective in the little time that he was in the movie. The unrelenting violence as well as x-rated and racist dialog in the movie, by its screen writer the ultra-liberal newspaper columnist Pete Hamill, was so laughable and off the wall that it came across more comical, how could anyone take it seriously, then anything else.

This film is over 30 years old,its attitudes are disgracefully non - PC. That is a given.It's not like today when everybody loves one another and we all live in harmony in a Rainbow Nation and all creeds and races co - exist in an atmosphere of mutual respect.Well,don't they? Things aren't a lot different in 2006,it's just that Hollywood likes to make us think they are.I'm not saying for a minute that it's right that things have barely changed in 30 years,but no amount of wishing will make it so.Professional criminals still hide their activities behind the poor and disenfranchised of their own communities,ferment trouble for their own advantage and cops like Eddie Ryan still hate them bitterly for doing it.Laws meant to protect the weak and vulnerable still shelter the cruel and ruthless.If Eddie Ryan,like Harry Callaghan before him,feels like chucking in his badge then he cannot altogether be blamed.Not that he gets a chance as his bosses pre-empt him. Clearly certain members of the Hispanic community are not shown in an exceptionally positive light in "Badge 373" and Mr Ryan is a baad baaad man,homophobic,racist,sexist and probably several other ists as well.but he does not exist in a vacuum,he merely reflects the society he lives in.I would suggest that a significant proportion of the population held attitudes not a thousand miles away from his and considered them to be perfectly acceptable. So here we are in 2006 tsk tsking about a film that shows a society whose views we don't approve of.They were times of social unrest,when there appeared to be a real threat to the status quo.Criminals took advantage of the turmoil and it was difficult to tell the man with a grievance from the man with a gun. "Badge 373" occupies quite an important position in the "Cop Movie" pantheon.It has obvious similarities to "The French Connection" but lacks TFC's sheer energy and inventiveness.It broke new ground in showing the cop / hero as a distinctly unpleasant person - something "The Shield" has made a virtue of.Your cop could now be dirty(Dirty Harry wasn't actually "dirty" was he),unprepossessing,inarticulate and amoral.Mr Robert Duval created a pugnacious objectionable ignorant cop we aren't supposed to admire,but one that we can believe in.He has been corrupted by the world he moves in and works by its rules,not those of respectable society.He is a wreck of a man,like "The Bad Lieutenant". "Badge 373"'s influence reaches a long way,you can't make a cop movie today without at least sub-consciously referring to it. It may look a bit cheap and shoddy by today's mega-budget standards and much of it may seem familiar,but remember you are looking at it from the wrong end of time's telescope.