Popular reviews

• 

  Review by Sam 🎞🏴‍☠️ ★★★½

  Solid 70's crime thriller; soulful beats, interesting story (but I secretly rooted for the "bad" guys 😋), a Pedro Pascal lookalike and Robert Duvall leaping, cursing, swearing and gun toting 😝 

  I'd recommend to fans of The French Connection or The Stone Killer 🧐

• 

  Review by Headhunter666 ★★★½ 4

  Robert Duvall krawallt sich als Cop durch den Moloch von New York.
  Sein Partner wurde ermordet und jetzt gilt es die Verantwortlichen zur Verantwortung zu ziehen.
  Dabei wird auf vieles geschissen, da die Dienstmarke abgegeben werden musste. Umso besser denn dann lässt sich auf eigene Faust ungeniert drauflos ermitteln.
  Wegzuflanken gibt es einige, doch selber gilt es auch einiges einzustecken.
  Die nächtliche Bus-Tour durch die Stadt ist ein krachendes Highlight mit viel Zerdepperungspotential.

  New York selber ist hier eigentlich der Hauptdarsteller:
  Dreckig, abgefuckt und stimmungsvoll melancholisch eingefangen, das es schon fast wie ein Dokumentarfilm wirkt.
  Es ist erstaunlich wie eindrucksvoll die Stadt in jener Zeit und in den 1980´ern unverblühmt cineastisch eingerahmt wurde.
  Die haben wohl in Gegenden gedreht, von denen die Wohlstandsverwahrloste High Society nix mitbekommen will und so gibt es auch hier interessante Subtexte was die ärmeren Zuwanderer angeht.

  WIE EIN PANTHER IN DER NACHT ist ein schmutziges Action-Crime Vehikel mit ordentlich Rums und Bums und authentischem Flair.

• 

  Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🇵🇸 ★ 5

  Summer of Scam: The June / July Crime Season 2

  I was looking forward to digesting some more 1970s crime in this project but even I, in all good conscience, cannot speak well of Badge 373.

  This is a terrible movie. 1970s crime was hardly known for its political correctness but even I, with all my experience watching this stuff, found myself shifting uncomfortably with the amount of racism aimed at Puerto Ricans in this movie. It's really quite unpleasant.

  The thing is that they are supposed to be set up as the villains of the piece. They're setting up some gun-running racket to try and gather up enough of a cache to force a political revolution back home, but…

• 

  Review by Jacob Knight ★★★

  A fascinating case in how Hollywood can learn all the wrongs lessons from a massive hit (as Duvall becomes the second cinematic iteration of Eddie “Popeye [Doyle]” Egan in as many years) while also being wildly entertaining in its own right. This is basically the POLICE STORY answer to FRENCH CONNECTION: a distinctly televisual, episodic adventure in the life of a racist, fascist detective who we all somehow love because he stands for an antiquated mode of masculine law and order. Does that make it any good? Who cares. It’s a kinda fascinating piece of pulp history that’s also a stellar work of early NYC Grime in its own right. Plus, the bus chase centerpiece of the picture is like young Walter Hill’s wet dream. So, there’s that.

• 

  Review by Justin LaLiberty ★★★

  Nowhere near as assured as either of The French Connection films, the *other* Eddie Egan film is still as brash, gritty and politically incorrect but it lack's the finesse of Friedkin and Frankenheimer. Instead, we get a lot of blunt racial slurs, aimless direction and a lot of filler. Still, there's some fantastic early 70s NYC footage and I'm a sucker for a solid bus chase.

• 

  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★

  Downbeat 70s obsessed cop tale that tries to mix its procedural oriented elements, Dirty Harry derivedaction beats and character work. The parts never really fits and 50s vet Koch most play up the more grim moments. Duvall is fine in the lead andcouple of the action scene display solid location work, butthere's better minor French Connection riffs out there.

• 

  Review by nagoya ★★★

  I don't think the problem is that the character of Duvall is not likeable or even the racial slurs (vintage pulp fiction is full of unlikeble protagonists after all). The main issues are that the film has been edited really badly, and that the ending is simplistic and unsatisfying. Having said that please let me know where I have to sign to have 8 seasons of young, fat Duvall holding a snub-nosed gun and yelling at people on the streets of NYC circa mid 70's...

• 

  Review by DNM ★½ 2

  Robert Duval, portraying and co- starring with Eddie Egan - the real-life FRENCH CONNECTION cop - calls someone a “spic” about every 30 seconds and raves as only he can , usually sticking his belly out for emphasis. 

  When he's not raving, Duval is running. Running from getting the shit kicked out of him, running to shoot somebody, running, running, running. He runs flat-footed; he ain't no miler. He runs like a late 50's white guy who devoted his high-school years to the 440 – and he flies, cop shoes 'n all.

  I'd love to stage a race between this era Duval and SOUTHLAND-era Regina King, who ran all over LA in her modern hurdler's style, knees high and arms…

• 

  Review by Mike Cuenca ★★★½ 2

  Just as how I love to see a knife-wielding killer slash and dice through teenagers, I love to see a down and gritty cop breaking-all-laws movie. Doesn't mean I support true life slayings or real life cop "tactics".

  Racial slurs left and right (none that offend me, and I'm Cuban so Puerto Ricans are my cousins), and lowball characterizations. But it's a good slice of neo-noir "copsploitation" and deserves to be spoken about in the same breath as The French Connection, and not negatively like Siskel had. C'mon, that bus ride chase is the shit!

  The lulls are what kill it and could have been tighter (Dirty Harry has way more going for it and its shorter by a dozen and one minutes) instead of hammering in points that had been covered already.

  Well worth a watch and I thank Indicator for spotlighting it.

• 

  Review by Andy Nelson ★★½

  In the race to make more Egan/Doyle-inspired cop movies after The French Connection did so well, The Seven-Ups wins out over this one. It's not bad but it often feels like Robert Duvall's version of Egan is just a misanthropic, racist son of a bitch just to make the film feel edgier. Instead, it just feels angry and misdirected. It doesn't help that Egan himself plays Duvall's captain and always feels like he's reading from cue cards. Ah well... at least there's a completely bonkers car chase midway through that almost seems out of a different movie.

  If anything, this is an interesting companion piece to those other movies just to see how these real cops shaped early 70s cinema in interesting ways.

• 

  Review by Gav ★★★

  Odd film this. It was a poor man's French Connection starring Robert Duvall and the real life Popeye Doyle.
  Difficult to take it seriously as it came across as almost like a serious spoof with the score and general theme.
  Honestly thought Tom Savini was the bad guy for a while too!
  Another film that shows just how grimy New York was back then.
  Pretty good but nowhere near great.

• 

  Review by Mark Tinta ★★

  As expected, there's some great gritty, time-capsule NYC location work in this lesser-known entry in the post-FRENCH CONNECTION craze. BADGE 373 gives Robert Duvall, fresh off THE GODFATHER, a chance to essentially play Popeye Doyle, as it's "inspired by the exploits of Eddie Egan," the cop whose drug bust heroics provided the foundation for THE FRENCH CONNECTION. As blustery Irish cop "Eddie Ryan," Duvall is loud, obnoxious, and so unabashedly racist, sexist, and homophobic that he makes Gene Hackman's Popeye Doyle look woke. Ryan is suspended after pursuing a Puerto Rican perp who falls off a rooftop, and everyone just assumes Ryan pushed him. While he's off-duty, Ryan's partner is murdered, prompting the anger-management case cop to investigate on his…