Wonderful character development!

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

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

It's great to watch a film you remember as a kid, but haven't seen in a long time. "Report to the Commissioner" is one of those films I remember liking a real lot, and I just watched it for the first time in forty years. Funny how time makes you remember some things incorrectly - for instance, somehow I remembered Yaphet Kotto being in the elevator with Michael Moriarty, not "Stick" the heroin dealer played by Tony King. (The elevator scenes are nothing short of spectacular.)"Report to the Commissioner" starts off a little slow and hap-hazard, but really picks up after a short while, mainly due to Moriarty's fine acting (although everyone else in the cast also does a great job). He's a tortured soul who really doesn't want to be a cop, and who gets into some serious trouble. Moriarty puts on one of his best performances.Yaphet Kotto is great in anything he's in, and Susan Blakely was easily one of the most beautiful actresses of the seventies. Other familiar faces are all over as the drama builds to a harrowing final half hour.Another thing I didn't remember was the ending, which hits hard, and kind of makes sense when you think about it. There's also a wild foot chase through the rooftops and streets on Times Square (love the crowds watching the filming).The seventies was such a fantastic time for films - no political correct nonsense, just real street elbow grease film making, with actors and actresses who didn't mind getting their feet dirty (in Tony King's case, literally). "Report to the Commissioner" is a good viewing.

The 70s were definitely a great time for cinema, giving us gritty NYC thrillers and dramas like "Across 110th Street", "Serpico", "The French Connection", and "Dog Day Afternoon". "Report to the Commissioner", based on the novel by James Mills, can join those ranks, with its matter of fact, semi-documentary approach. Its characters are vivid and convincing, and the performances memorable. The story allows for some tense scenarios, and offers an interesting look into departmental politics within the police department, and how this sort of thing can create its share of victims.Michael Moriarty stars as Beauregard "Bo" Lockley, a hippie-ish rookie detective on the police force who's overwhelmingly naive. He's partnered with the hard-boiled veteran Richard "Crunch" Blackstone (Yaphet Kotto), and gets a little taste of the street life. His own "doing good" mentality gets him into a lot of trouble when he ends up shooting Patty Butler (Susan Blakely), a beautiful young detective working deep undercover. She'd made the bold decision to move in with a drug pusher, Thomas "Stick" Henderson (Tony King) to get the goods on him, and Lockley had been fed a line of bull about her identity in order to make the whole thing look good. Now the NYPD has to decide what to do with this mess, and how much to tell the commissioner (Stephen Elliott).For this viewer, the only real debit was Moriarty. Sometimes his eccentricities can benefit a movie (ex: his hilarious performance in "Q: The Winged Serpent"), but here, he's just too whiny and mannered to make his character as sympathetic as he should be. Fortunately, there's lots of heavy hitters here to pick up the slack: Kotto, Blakely, Hector Elizondo, Michael McGuire, Dana Elcar, Bob Balaban, William Devane, Elliott, Vic Tayback. And it's cool to see a young Richard Gere making his film debut as Billy the pimp. Real life NYC detectives Sonny Grosso and Albert Seedman have small roles.Some of the story is played out in the form of interviews, helping us to get insight into character motivations. There's one damn entertaining, and lengthy, foot chase, which also delivers beefcake for the audience because the studly King is running around wearing little. The entire sequence on the elevator is riveting, especially since we definitely get a sense of how hot it must be in there for Moriarty and King. And Balaban figures in what has to be one of the most original "tailing" sequences seen on film. The location shooting (cinematography by Mario Tosi) is excellent, and Elmer Bernstein supplies a sometimes unusual but generally effective music score.This one is well worth catching for fans of the actors and lovers of 70s cinema.Eight out of 10.

Yeah. You gotta see this film. No, I mean like you gotta. Like now. So go do it, alright? Or else we got nothing', talk about.Yeah, OK, I know, ain't the greatest film going', far from it, fact.But hey, you like them late 60's - early 70's Land Arks they called cars? Everybody does, right? I know I do. Most my buddies do, too. I drove 'em. And you did, too. Huge Chryslers with massive Big-Block 383's with 'Purple Cams'. Awesome Plymouths rigged out with 440 Interceptors, headers, and dead quiet Imperial Mufflers that could stomp any one these dreary green electro-turkeys what they drive today. These cars were big, fast, mean, and required a state the size, Idaho, there, pull a '180 at speed but so what? They were long, comfy, and powerful because they weren't smog motor dogs like them late 70s - early 80s rats, were they? Nor did cars in "Report to the Commissioner" need computer geek tricks to get out of their own way, the way these 'hybrids' that resemble elephant suppositories do today, right? They'd kick the snot out of any four-cylinder phony what thought he was hot stuff, couldn't they? That's why you see 'em, this film, isn't it? You know it.And, hey, you like Industrial Archaeology? Is Urban Exploration your secret passion? You get off, spooking around inside boarded-up factories, power plants, and nut houses? Then you gonna dig this film. Why? Because it was shot during the depressed 70s when Manhattan hit the skids that them Coward-Piven commies greased up for them, special. Decrevalent old buildings with bricks in need of pointing and windows that cried out for glazing were crowned by wooden water tanks that seeped rusty ooze, across whose roofs cops shot it out with thugs.Junkies abounded. They drooled. They yammered. They accosted citizens who took out their aggressions on double-amputees who scurried about on roller-creepers. This in turn whelped to an entire genre of ghoulish Gahan Wilson cartoons.Yaphet Kotto, the son of a Crown Prince of Cameroon - don't take my word for it, go look it up on this site, already, what, I got to do your homework too, crying out loud? - commands this film in which a young Michael Moriarity plays the reluctant detective.And the Precinct House? Oh, you're one these kids, here, thinks 'The Job' is about cops who dress up in sexy leotards, whisper at one another in sterile luxury CSI suites while computers solve their cases?Yeah. Well, think again. Wake up, smell the Kerosene, there, Poochie.Real Precinct houses stunk like B.O., cigar smoke, junkie-sweat, cordite, and stuff ya can't write about here - use your imagination, if video games haven't erased it by now. Cops typed reports on ancient clattering Underwoods, using two fingers to do so, as arrestees who stunk like Hoagies bounced around inside cages next, the cops' desks, and caterwauled like moonstruck werewolves.Dispatchers called cops on real VHF and UHF analog radios, not today's commie-punk '800 megahertz trunked digital' kluges that crash every time some Park Avenue socialite passes gas in the drawing room. From where I lived, Point Judith, Rhode Island, you could hear NYPD calls two hundred miles away. How'd I do that? 'cause my friend John S_____. up the road, Wakefield, was doin' it since Joseph Petrosino walked a beat that's how, and he showed me. You got any more questions? Yeah. You gotta see this film. After readin' this, I think you maybe now understan' a little better how come, right? Am I right?Paul Vincent ZecchinoManasota Key, Florida08 November, 2009

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS! I really wanted to like this movie but I just could not. This cast is just excellent. Any movie where Richard Gere is an extra has a good cast. I mean hey, Michael Moriatry, Yaphet Kotto, and Suan Blakely is hard to beat. But the plot is just not believeable. Undercover policewoman moves with a dope dealer to get the goods on him? HELLO! Anything she comes up with is instantly thrown out of court! And it goes down hill from there.