I found the 1975 movie based on James Mills's novel Report to the Commissioner confusing and drab about half-way through, until the first of two epic chases. I thought that I had seen everything in chase scenes (just in Harold Lloyd's multi-vehicle final one in "Safety Last"!), but found out I hadn't (and am more cautious about thinking that now I have!). The second chase is longer and impressive, though less innovative. What is innovative is how the chase leads to a standoff between the heavily sweating policeman and the heavily sweating drug dealer who was chased into a department-store elevator. The recognition that both are pawns in other's games prefigures No Man's Land—which is already probably saying enough to risk being accused of "plot spoiling."

However, I don't think that I could spoil the plot, because I don't fully understand it. I have an interpretation of what the narcotics officers were up to, but am not very certain that my interpretation is right (and I returned to watch the first two scenes to try to see if I had missed something crucial; if so, I missed it twice).

The city (New York) looks decidedly unglamorous in the movie. Colors are muted with a sickly green predominating (OK, black and white are major, too, with Hector Elizondo a brown in between...).The look is the 1970s grittiness of "The French Connection" and " Panic in Needle Park" with covering-up being the police force's most developed skill, roughing people up in second place (also see "Popeye" Doyle in two incarnations by Gene Hackman), and being frustrated at superiors (within the police hierarchy) and inferiors (i.e., citizens they were policing) third.

The new college-educated, long-haired detective Beauregard 'Bo' Lockley (Beauregard) Lockley) reminds me of the clueless prisoners in "Fortune and Men's Eyes" (Wendell Burton) and "Short Eyes" (Bruce Davison). He is set up. I know by whom (Hector Elizondo's Captain D'Angelo: this is established early on), but am not at all certain for what ends. He is partnered with a black streetwise veteran, Richard 'Crunch' Blackstone, played with considerable nuance by Yaphet Kotto.

Very dogged and not-at-all streetwise, Bo is order to find a prostitute who is really an undercover narcotics agent (Susan Blakely) targeting a teflon-coated drug dealer, "Stick" (Tony King). People die, a department store is emptied for a long standoff, an investigation of what really happened is ordered... and delivered to the commissioner.

Part of what makes the narrative confusing is the flashbacks from the droning interrogations of the official investigation. I think they should be subjective, reflecting the perspective of the person who is recalling them, but they are shot objectively as if a straightforward policier was shot and then spliced up and inserted within perfunctory interviews of the participants.

Abby Mann, best known for working with Stanley Kramer on "message pictures" such as "Judgment at Nuremberg" and "Ship of Fools," but who also created the character/series "Kojack") is not a screenwriter noted for subtlety and leaving audiences to guess what he was trying to tell them. The undistinguished director Milton Katselas (Butterflies Are Free) seems to have been good with black actors (or, perhaps lucky in casting good black actors?), but not particularly good in making movies hang together.

But back to the chase scenes! The fierce determination in them is as impressive as the risks they take, and the elevator standoff is genuinely masterful (with "Stick" assessing the situation and trying to explain it to Lockley). There's some great stuff, some very ordinary stuff, and more than a little ineptness in constructing the movie. (The story derives from a real cover-up that included a standoff in Sak's Fifth Avenue.)

And as failed a cop as Michael Moriarity was in "Report," he has gone on to play many others (including a drug-smuggler in "Who'll Stop the Rain"), not least in the original ""Law and Order" while Yaphet Kotto went on to star in "Homicide" as Lt. Al Giardello (and to play the evil Idi Amin Dada in "Raid on Entebbe"). And Richard Gere, who played a swaggering pimp in a black cowboy hat, went on to greater prominence!


Recommended:
Yes

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age