BEFORE: It's Nostalgia week here at the Movie Year, apparently - "Species" and "Species II" were both released in the 1990's, and now I've got two legal/crime dramas that are similarly back-dated, one's even from the 80's. Let's hope there wasn't some kind of expiration date on these, because I'm running about thirty years behind. In honor of Nostalgia Week, I went out last night to Barcade after work - just to play the video games, not to drink - so I only spent $3.00 on the games, I'm sure they love it when people come in and don't drop money on a few beers. Played 4 games of Q-Bert, a little Mr. Do, Galaga and some Tapper - got the high scores on TWO of those games, and thought about all those hours I spent in arcades when I was a teenager. Remember when you didn't have video games at HOME and you had to go out to a bar or arcade to play them?
Bill Boggs carries over from "Species II", speaking of the 1990's. Boggs was a fixture on TV in and around New York City starting in the late 80's, on the station that later became the FOX affiliate, but he also had shows on the Food Network and then became a producer on "The Morton Downey Show" (look it up). He also made frequent cameos on shows like "Oz" and "Miami Vice" and in movies, of course, which helps me a great deal. (Movies always need people who look like newscasters and talk-show hosts to play, well, newscasters and talk-show hosts.) I saw him in person at the theater where I work last year because he introduced that Dean Martin documentary "King of Cool" during a festival. Keep on working, Bill...
Oh, yeah, the year's almost over and the holidays are almost here, so these are the actor links that will get me to Christmas: Andy Garcia, Joe Pantoliano, Glenne Headly, Denise Dowse, Hilary Swank, Meryl Streep, Katie Holmes, Tim Meadows, Julianne Moore, Hope Davis, Michael Sheen, Kris Marshall, John Cleese, Darby Camp, and Kurt Russell & Goldie Hawn. It'll be over before you know it...
THE PLOT: A newly-elected District Attorney finds himself in the middle of a police corruption investigation that may involve his father and his father's partner.
AFTER: Speaking of nostalgia, about half the cast of "The Sopranos" is in this film, one way or another. But instead of mobsters, they all play cops and judges here. However, the whole point of the film is that the whole system is corrupt, from the cops to the judges to the D.A.'s, everyone acts the way they think they need to in order to keep the city safe, even if that means breaking the rules just a bit. Or a lot. So then, really, is there much difference between the good guys and the bad guys?
That's the weird thing about New York City, though - people rise through the ranks in the police department or the legal system and then things happen, I don't know how or why, but they do. Remember that Rudy Giuliani used to be on the side of the angels, he was a district attorney in New York and prosecuted the biggest mob bosses around in the 1980's. He got elected mayor, served two terms, during which crime rates went down, and the sex clubs were closed down in Times Square. Then something happened, not sure what, after he ran for President in 2008 and failed. Instead of just writing a book and making money from public speaking, he went back to work in the legal arena, and ended up on Trump's team, now of course there are allegations of. corruption, spreading conspiracy theories about the 2016 election, and he came under investigation for violating lobbying laws, and he's a co-conspirator in the attempts to overturn that election. Look, I know life is long and we all go through changes over time, but that's a pretty wide swing, isn't it?
Mr. "Law and Order" is now on trial, and he's not the only one - I'm also thinking about Bernard Kerik, former commissioner of the NYPD, who almost got nominated to head the Dept. of Homeland Security, but he withdrew his nomination because he had employed an illegal nanny, and that's the sort of thing they check when you get nominated for a cabinet position. A little more digging and they found ethics violations and charges of tax fraud, and eventually he pleaded guilty to eight felonies, and served time. So there's definitely some kind of shift that can happen when people rise high in the ranks of law or government, and now of course we're watching the trials of Trump and also the ethics violations of Clarence Thomas, to see if karma exists and if these officials will end up serving hard time.
So this movie's not very far off, I think, regarding what's possibly going on behind the scenes, and the higher you go up the chain, the more serious the transgressions. Two veteran detectives are setting themselves up to take down a drug kingpin, but perhaps things are not all what they seem to be. During the confrontation, Det. Liam Casey is shot, and it also appears that one police officer shoots another, this is chalked up to the chaos of the incident, but is that really what happened? The drug kingpin kills another two cops, and escapes in a squad car dressed like an officer, prompting a city-wide manhunt. In the meantime, the District Attorney appoints Sean Casey, the son of the detective who got shot, to lead the prosecution against the drug dealer when he is caught.
In a surprise move, the drug dealer turns himself in, escorted by his attorney, who first made a show for the media of having the drug dealer appear before the press naked, to show he was unbruised and unharmed, because he feared the police would beat him as soon as he was in custody. Umm, yeah, he was right, because the police couldn't wait to use excessive force on him. In the trial's opening statement, attorney Sam Vigoda admits his client killed two cops and shot a third, but he claims it was in self-defense because the police from two precincts were coming to kill him, as they were not being paid enough protection money. Allegedly another drug dealer was offering the police more to deal drugs in their precincts, and he wouldn't match the other guy's offer.
The question then becomes - is there any truth to the attorney's claims, that the police are all corrupt and on the take, or is this just an attempt to create some reasonable doubt? The defense attorney keeps asking everyone on the stand if they know some officer named Kleinhoff, and after the trial that man's dead body turns up in the river, with an address book that has the names of several officers involved in the initial shooting. Every officer is questioned and some end up confessing to bribery charges, so it seems like maybe there was some kind of narcotics scandal in those two precincts after all. Sean keeps pursuing the case and ends up finding out that his father's partner was taking bribes, and also that his father didn't technically have a warrant for the drug dealer that night - well, he had one but it had expired.
OK, well, hey, nobody's perfect, I guess that's an OK lesson, and things are never really black and white but often exist in the gray areas in between, I guess that's another lesson. But then the drug kingpin's own lawyer doesn't fight for his release, even though the self-defense claim did have some merit, it's determined that prison is still the best place for that guy to be. Umm, sure the city will be safer, and yeah, he did kill two cops, but there was one drug dealer and like twenty corrupt cops, what about all of them? Not to mention the cop who didn't have the valid warrant and the judge who back-dated one after the fact, what happens to them? They just get to keep leading their lives, how is that fair? Who determines what is for the greater good, and when we do and don't prosecute? Turns out there are no easy answers, which is not always something that people want to hear.
This film was directed by Sidney Lumet, based on a novel called "Tainted Evidence", which was loosely based on the case of Larry Davis, a drug dealer who shot six cops and escaped from the scene of the shooting, evading capture for six days. His lawyer, William Kunstler, later claimed that the police were trying to kill him as they were corrupt and involved in taking bribes.
Also starring Andy Garcia (last seen in "De Palma"), Ian Holm (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), James Gandolfini (last seen in "Welcome to the Rileys"), Lena Olin (last seen in "Havana"), Richard Dreyfuss (last seen in "Spielberg"), Shiek Mahmud-Bey (last seen in "The Bonfire of the Vanities"), Ron Leibman (last seen in "The Hot Rock"), Colm Feore (last seen in "The Red Violin"), Dominic Chianese (last seen in "The Night We Never Met"), Paul Guilfoyle (ditto), Vic Noto, Marcia Jean Kurtz (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in America"), Richard Bright (ditto), Jude Ciccolella (last seen in "Beloved"), John Randolph Jones (last seen in "Dogville"), Chuck Pfeiffer, Jim Moody (last seen in '28 Days"), Teddy Coluca (last seen in "I'm Thinking of Ending Things"), Bonnie Rose (last seen in "Inside Llewyn Davis"), Norman Matlock (last seen in "Clockers"), Sidney Armus (last seen in "Heartburn"), James Murtaugh (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Santo Fazio, Anthony Alessandro (last seen in "Jacob's Ladder"), Ronald von Klaussen (last seen in "Nixon")
with cameos from Bobby Cannavale (last seen in "Blonde"), Vincent Pastore (last seen in "The Family"), Frank Vincent (last seen in "Gun Shy"), Donna Hanover (last seen in "Just a Kiss"), Jack Cafferty (last seen in "It Could Happen to You"), Kaity Tong,
RATING: 6 out of 10 trips to the sauna
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