Ed McBain's 87th Precinct - Ice 
                                   
Director: Bradford May
Year: 1996
Rating: 5.5
The second of three TV movies focusing on the 87th Precinct. Larry Cohen wrote the teleplay and it is fairly good till the end when a few old chestnuts enter into the film souring it a bit for me. But he gets the chaos of the job and their place of work down pretty well. There is one main plot but like in all the 87th Precinct novels, there are other smaller sub-crimes being investigated by other men on the force. Sometimes they end up being tied together and others they are separate threads. The main one here concerns a Broadway chorus girl being murdered outside the theater. Not to pat myself on the back because I would never do that - but I figured out who the killer was almost immediately. The cops tell someone that this girl has been murdered. This person doesn't ask how it was done. Everyone would ask that. Unless they knew. Disappointed that Carella (Dale Midkiff) and Meyer Meyer (Joe Pantoliano) didn't pick up on that. Get on the ball boys.




Two other threads are about a man who robs people in laundry mats and makes the women take off their panties - and a rapist and killer in the park. They both get short shrift. The plot gets more complicated than you might expect as the deeper they dig, the victim is far from Riding Hood dealing with drugs and getting tickets and re-selling them for a steep profit. Sort of like Ticketmaster does. Scumbags. A couple more murders and then the chestnuts fall on an open fire - Teddy nearly gets killed because she just happens to be in the right place to read the lips of murderers and Carella lets the murderer get by him so that we can get the inevitable chase. Maybe next time you should pull out your gun.