Frank Sinatra plays Detective Joe Leland, a cop whose dislike of the corruption he sees in the force will come to a head while he investigates the death of the homosexual son of a prominent political person. Lee Remick is Karen, Joe's 'nympomaniac'love interest. One would hope that the Roderick Thorp book that this film is based on is much better than this turned out to be as the fact that the book is a direct prequel to the one that was made into the best action movie from the '80's ever made "Die Hard", which was a deciding factor for me to search this one out. Anyone who's looking for any connection other then that of the two films is oh so sadly mistaken.
Much has been said of the 'homophobic' attitudes in this film, but the truth of the matter this is positively liberal in it's design. For every instance of that 'homophobia' you have Sinatra distancing himself from that mentality. Furthermore his character constantly rails against the housing that he sees that minorities are 'forced' to live in, police corruption, and other progressive causes. You even have one certain cop using literal Gestapo tactics. Now overlooking the liberally-slanted feel of the film and getting into the acting. Lee Remick just didn't seem to have any of the required chemistry with Sinatra, which is a huge detriment to the film as their relationship was the paramount one that the film choose to hinge on. Also the film is totally bereft of humor of any kind, given it an arid feel, which would have been fine if the subject matter was compelling enough to warrant such an approach, it wasn't. What we're left with is a not particularly well-acted 'mature' version of any generic cop show that were rife in the decade that it was made in.
My Grade: D+
Much has been said of the 'homophobic' attitudes in this film, but the truth of the matter this is positively liberal in it's design. For every instance of that 'homophobia' you have Sinatra distancing himself from that mentality. Furthermore his character constantly rails against the housing that he sees that minorities are 'forced' to live in, police corruption, and other progressive causes. You even have one certain cop using literal Gestapo tactics. Now overlooking the liberally-slanted feel of the film and getting into the acting. Lee Remick just didn't seem to have any of the required chemistry with Sinatra, which is a huge detriment to the film as their relationship was the paramount one that the film choose to hinge on. Also the film is totally bereft of humor of any kind, given it an arid feel, which would have been fine if the subject matter was compelling enough to warrant such an approach, it wasn't. What we're left with is a not particularly well-acted 'mature' version of any generic cop show that were rife in the decade that it was made in.
My Grade: D+