Ol' Blue Eyes plays a tortured detective burdened with a liberal conscience, a cheating wife, and a bunch of time-servers and corrupt fascist bully-boys as colleagues in this interesting and complex character study. Joe Leland is an anomaly in his precinct - a career cop from a long line of cops who's read sociology, is tolerant of gays and minorities and compassionate towards the social detritus of the permissive society that litters the streets of New York City at the fag end of the 1960s. Inevitably, he runs up against complacent hierarchies and corrupt power elites, and along the way makes some deep compromises that cause him to question his role as a police officer. Sinatra paints an admirably restrained and nuanced portrait of a man deeply ambivalent about the kind of authority he represents. The film refuses to offer any easy answers to the social, sexual and political issues it raises, and steers well clear of the cartoon heroics of contemporaneous cop films like Bullit and Coogan's Bluff that also dabbled with the mores of the swinging 60s. The Detective was marketed as titillating and sensational 'adult' fare that exploited the recent demise of the Production Code to offer audiences a new frankness about an America in the throes of the sexual revolution. But beneath these rather opportunistic trappings it's a serious-minded exploration of the meaning of authority and deviance in a post-authoritarian age. While burdened with some now rather outdated representations of homosexuality (what plot there is revolves around the homophobic murder of a gay man), the film's heart is nevertheless in the right place. It's a kind of liberal precursor to the crypto-fascist and authoritarian Dirty Harry. That the heroes of both films reach the same final decision, but for very different reasons, is fascinating, especially given that Sinatra was himself due to play Harry Callahan in the later movie until fate - in the form of a broken wrist - intervened. I guess Joe Leland is Ying to Harry Callahan's Yang. Anyway, The Detective is certainly worth watching, not least as it represents one of Sinatra's last meaningful dramatic screen roles.
Review of The Detective
