THE SUPER COPS A Film Review Copyright Dragan Antulov 1999
Today we see that US television holds actual monopoly on the adaptations of true stories. But quarter of century ago, it wasn't the case. In the golden age of 1970s Hollywood often allowed its director to seek inspiration for their films in current and sometimes very recent events. One of such films was SERPICO, Sydney Lumet's account of the real life New York policeman who fought police establishment and corruption as well as crime. THE SUPER COPS, made a year later by the famed blaxploitation director Gordon Parks, deals with the same subject and has real life protagonists too. But, similarities between those two movies cease, because while Lumet made very serious and depressing drama, Parks took another direction and used that material for light-hearted comedy.
The movie begins with the documentary footage that introduces us to the main characters - New York policemen David Greenberg and Robert Hantz (both of them served as technical advisors and appeared in small cameos in the movie). Than we see the beginning of their police careers - after graduating they were on probation in traffic unit, but that didn't prevent Greenberg (played by Ron Leibman) and to pursue his dream of taking drug dealers off the street. Assissted by his partner Hantz (David Selby), he makes whole series of arrests working plain clothes in his spare time. Police establishment is less impressed with the numerous arrests than with their total disregard of internal police protocol. As a punishment, they are both sent to 21st Precint, stationed in the worst crime-ridden and drug- infested part of town. There they would continue their crime-fighting crusade, despite the open animosity of their colleagues and suspicion by their paranoid superior, Captain Krasna (played by Dan Frazer). Their success in putting drug dealers out of business is turning them into local legends with nicknames "Batman" and "Robin". However, that also brings attention of powerful local drug bosses who order contract on their lives.
Comparisons between SERPICO and THE SUPER COPS, despite their genre differences, are unavoidable, and that is the main problem with the this film. Same as Lumet's work, THE SUPER COPS have a rather weak plot that doesn't concentrate on a single chain of events and, instead, simply depicts the years of someone's police career through the series of anecdotes. Those anecdotes, mostly showing ingenious and often very funny methods that Greenberg and Hantz employed in order to deceive and arrest criminals, allowed Parks to make whole series of short but very entertaining action scenes. Unfortunately, those scenes alone weren't enough to make coherent story out of them; script by Lorenzo Semple Jr. simply ignores private life of the protagonists and his characters aren't fleshed out and are often non-existent. Ron Leibman tried to fill that emptiness by playing Greenberg as neurotic, but that often turned into unnecessary over-acting. David Selby, on the other hand, is rather uninterested as his second fiddle. Potentially interesting performance was given by Sheila E. Frazier in the small role of Greenberg's prostitute informer, but Parks drastically reduced her screen time. By concentrating on the action and ignoring character development, Parks shortened this film to 90 minutes, quite reasonable length that made this film anything but boring and prevented many viewers from being too annoyed with its numerous flaws. Anyway, film is still very funny and it could also be seen as a product of its times - one of the most hilarious scenes deals with the hidden listening devices, theme very familiar for the people who used to live during Watergate era. THE SUPER COPS descended into obscurity and this is quite understandable, since the movie was dwarfed by the real genre classics of that era. But, on its own level it works fine and today's audience, faced with usually inferior material of the same genre, would probably appreciate it.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
Review written on October 12th 1999
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax Fido: 2:381/100 E-mail: dragan.antulov@st.tel.hr E-mail: drax@purger.com E-mail: dragan.antulov@altbbs.fido.hr
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