Director:
Robert Hartford-Davis
Year: 1974
Rating: 6.0
Year: 1974
Rating: 6.0
It's Billy Dee Williams. The big lapels, the
shirt unbuttoned down to his navel, the hair always perfectly in place. Always
on the cool side of life even with a gun pointed at his head and an itchy
trigger finger. Mr. Smooth in films like The Lady Sings the Blues and Mahogany.
Perfect for Lando Calrissian in a few years. This is an intriguing if far
from scintillating film that keeps you guessing till the end. Very cynical
and you never quite know where everyone stands on the line between good and
bad. His character seems willing to step on to either side.
Billy is Sneed a cop from San Francisco who moves to New Mexico to take a job in that police department. He is hired by the Chief (Eddy Albert) to root out the mob. Just as he arrives there is an attempt to spring three crooks being tried in court by that mob. Turns into a big shootout and a bunch of dead. Sneed is right in the middle of it. The newspapers call him a hero. The next thing he does is to visit the business of the biggest crook in the county played by Vic Morrow. He comes for his payday. $5,000. A dirty cop and a hero. Back in San Francisco he took what he could get. Here in small town New Mexico he figures it will be a breeze. He even has an investment manager. But at the same time he is a good cop. It is perplexing. Is he undercover or just playing both sides. A complicated man. And it is never fully answered which is not what we expect. It has the basics of a cop show - a good chase, a beating or two, some shots exchanged - but it dips into a lot of gray areas.
The director is Robert Hartford-Davis and he has an odd filmography. Born in England, he made some trashy sounding films before this - Gonks Go Beat, Gutter Girls, School for Unclaimed Girls, Incense for the Damned. But somehow he managed to be director of Black Gunn with Jim Brown and this film and then he passed away a few years later doing nothing of note.
Billy is Sneed a cop from San Francisco who moves to New Mexico to take a job in that police department. He is hired by the Chief (Eddy Albert) to root out the mob. Just as he arrives there is an attempt to spring three crooks being tried in court by that mob. Turns into a big shootout and a bunch of dead. Sneed is right in the middle of it. The newspapers call him a hero. The next thing he does is to visit the business of the biggest crook in the county played by Vic Morrow. He comes for his payday. $5,000. A dirty cop and a hero. Back in San Francisco he took what he could get. Here in small town New Mexico he figures it will be a breeze. He even has an investment manager. But at the same time he is a good cop. It is perplexing. Is he undercover or just playing both sides. A complicated man. And it is never fully answered which is not what we expect. It has the basics of a cop show - a good chase, a beating or two, some shots exchanged - but it dips into a lot of gray areas.
The director is Robert Hartford-Davis and he has an odd filmography. Born in England, he made some trashy sounding films before this - Gonks Go Beat, Gutter Girls, School for Unclaimed Girls, Incense for the Damned. But somehow he managed to be director of Black Gunn with Jim Brown and this film and then he passed away a few years later doing nothing of note.