Badge 373 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Badge 373 Blu-ray Movie Review

The French Disconnection.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 23, 2012

Every so often a film will come along that manages to completely reinvigorate a genre, even if on the face of things, the film perhaps doesn't offer anything major that hasn't been done (to death) before. Sometimes a film will be technically so innovative that it almost creates its own genre (one thinks especially of outings like the first Matrix film), but usually for whatever reason movies will somehow capture the public zeitgeist in a perhaps unexpected way and become phenomena beyond what a strictly objective look at their contents might suggest. It's kind of amusing to recognize that the early seventies saw the reinvention of the hard bitted cop film with 1971's The French Connection, which was followed in short order by the reinvention of the hard bitten gangster film with The Godfather. While The Godfather supposedly alluded to some real life characters and events (rumors swirled that the singer in the film was modeled after Frank Sinatra, for instance), The French Connection made no real bones about having been based on the exploits of two New York City narcotics detectives named Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso. The French Connection's fictionalized version of Egan, "Popeye" Doyle (portrayed by Gene Hackman, who won an Oscar for his performance), catapulted Egan himself into minor celebrity status (Egan had a bit role in The French Connection playing Simonson, Doyle's boss). That notoriety, along with the outstanding success The French Connection enjoyed, undoubtedly led to Badge 373, a film which might just as well have been titled The French Connection 1 ½ or at least The Further Adventures of Eddie Egan, though in this particular instance, the character is once again renamed to Eddie Ryan, and is portrayed by Robert Duvall. The real life Egan is also once again on hand in a supporting role to give the film some added gravitas and supposed verisimilitude. Like The French Connection, Badge 373 is highly improbable at times (does anyone think a car chase like that in the Friedkin film could have happened without major carnage ensuing?), but also has some added smarminess that wasn't part of The French Connection, which at least may give the impression that it is, as with the best detective films, hard boiled. The film is certainly not in the same league as The French Connection, but it's also perhaps at least fitfully a bit better than it has any right to be, considering its derivative genesis and at times formulaic (and often unseemly) approach to its characters and plot.

Some may think they've wandered into some sort of Twilight Zone alternative universe non-singing and non- dancing sequel to West Side Story as well as to The French Connection when watching Badge 373 for the incipient conflict between Puerto Ricans and Anglos is a major part of the subtext of the film. In fact those of Hispanic heritage will probably be revolted by the film's whole cloth portrayal of Puerto Ricans as down and dirty thugs, not to mention some decidedly politically incorrect use of slurs which was probably even questionable back in the early seventies when this film premiered. Badge 373 is relentlessly dour in its depiction of this criminal underclass and the film may indeed be seen as objectionable on that basis alone.

On the flip side, Ryan is a fairly brutal cop, one whose zealous prosecution of a Puerto Rican criminal early in the film actually gets him dismissed from the force. One in fact has to wonder if the real life Eddie Egan ever questioned how he was being portrayed in the film, for Ryan is as relentlessly dour as the film itself, and not a typical hero for whom an audience is going to feel sympathy. Ryan manhandles his way through both his professional and personal life (his put upon girlfriend is portrayed by Verna Bloom in an affecting and effective performance), and there's no mistaking that Ryan considers himself a modern day vigilante, out to move the wheels of justice on his own (at times extremely violent) terms.

After the establishing sequence where Ryan's actions lead to the death of the Puerto Rican criminal and he is put on leave, things really get underway when Ryan finds out his partner has been murdered, his throat slit in Brooklyn. That sets him off on a one man revenge mission which takes up the bulk of the film and which (of course) leads him right back into the lair of the Puerto Rican crime syndicate. Throughout the film director Howard Koch (who was perhaps better known as a producer, having brought several film adaptation of Neil Simon's plays, including The Odd Couple, to the screen) attempts to invest the proceedings with French Connection verisimilitude, and gets the grit largely right, even if he seems to miss the larger point of having that verisimilitude serve a film that actually is palatable.

Badge 373 takes a really unfortunate, yet unintentionally hilarious, misstep at about the one hour mark (halfway through this film, which is too long at two hours or so), with a car chase scene which is obviously meant to remind viewers of the exciting sequence in the Friedkin film. Instead, it's sheer lunacy, and I in fact was laughing out loud throughout much of it. Ryan purloins a city bus (a bus!), still full of aghast passengers, while a slew of thugs takes over a whole range of cars, trucks and cabs and they chase each other in a mad marauding escapade throughout Manhattan. It looks like something out of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and it seriously sets this film off the rails, something it has a hard time recovering from despite some occasionally effective moments (especially between Duvall and Bloom) as everything winds toward its expectedly hyperbolic denouement.

This is simply the kind of film that was obviously made as a knock off to cash in on the then current excitement surrounding (as the film attributes its source material) "the exploits of Eddie Egan". But it's also the kind of film that hasn't aged at all well. Ryan's racist, homophobic (and generally misanthropic) rants are particularly hard to swallow in our hopefully more politically correct times, and Duvall is stuck in a one note role that simply has him screaming inane lines at virtually everyone who wanders into a scene with him. This is the sort of film where a rogue cop basically tears through a major modern metropolis, dispatching the bad guys right and left and leaving a trail of destructive mayhem in the process, and yet no one seems to really be all that concerned about it. By the time the chief bad Puerto Rican (portrayed by Henry Darrow) attempts to "escape" by climbing up a construction crane (why do chase scenes always seem to go up?), the film itself has sunk pretty low.

Badge 373 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Badge 373 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is one of the rougher looking Paramount catalog titles that has been released by Olive Films, though at least part of that is by design. Badge 373 has the gritty, street ethos that became de rigeur after The French Connection, and that means lots of location footage in more or less natural lighting conditions, resulting in greater grain than usual in several sequences, especially those at night or in darkened interior environments. The elements here sport more than usual age related wear and tear, with quite a few white specks and flecks, especially in what would have been the first couple of reels. Color is okay, though on the pallid (and slightly purple) side of things, and the overall look of the film is on the soft side, again perfectly in line with what an early seventies film looked like when exhibited theatrically.

Badge 373 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Badge 373 is another Olive Films release with a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio mono track that suffices fairly well for this film, despite its overt action elements which probably could have benefited from at least a stereo option. Fidelity is generally quite good here, though the midrange can sound a little murky in some of the busier sonic activity. The film features a funky score by J.J. Jackson that comes off quite well in this lossless environment, and dialogue is clear and easy to hear in the well prioritized mix.

Badge 373 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

As has been Olive's standard operating procedure with this Paramount catalog releases, there are no supplements of any kind on this Blu-ray.

Badge 373 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Badge 373 has some fitfully effective moments, but they're buried in such an overall unseemly environment that it's hard to take the film, especially with the 20/20 hindsight afforded by our contemporary standards of political correctness. There's really no one to root for here, despite Duvall's character being the ostensible "hero", and it's actually kind of surprising that Egan would allow even a fictionalized version of himself be portrayed this way. There is some great location Manhattan photography here, and a really gritty ambience that is very redolent of The French Connection, but Badge 373 never rises to the dramatic heights of the Hackman starrer, and in fact kind of wallows in a level of smarminess that doesn't speak well of New York's finest one way or the other.