Dated by its handling of the formerly taboo subject of homosexuality and further hampered by an overly sober script, nevertheless this Frank Sinatra neo-noir has a lot to commend itself.
Adapted from a popular novel of the day by Abby Mann in a pre-Kojak assignment, it's difficult not to see Sinatra's Joe Leeming's battle-weary, incorruptible cop as a precursor to Mann's most famous invented character from the next decade. The plot too could have come from the TV show albeit with the utilisation of more adult themes, including the character of Sinatra's nymphomaniac wife (Lee Remick), the graphic depiction of the opening murder and execution of an innocent suspect, egged onto a false confession by a promotion-hungry Sinatra.
This is one of the problems of the script, with Sinatra set up from the start as a down-to-earth workaday detective but with a social conscience of course. So Frank gets to soapbox a lot about the ghetto and poverty on the one hand and corruption and cover-ups in high places on the other. Sinatra manfully tries to carry off this heavy load on his own, but can't help but look awkward when cajoling the damning confession from his suspect or as if he's memorised some of his equally damning speeches against the powers that be. Credit him for taking on a modernist role at odds, I'd have said, with his family-entertainer background.
There are a lot of big names in support, with Robert Duvall noteworthy as an over-zealous underling and Jack Klugman as Sinatra's trusted deputy. Sugar Ray Robinson has a fair old fight with his lines as an over-impressionable black colleague of Sinatra's, but I'm not sure I could award him the decision in the final reckoning.
Smoothly and occasionally stylishly directed by Gordon Jenkins, the film is nonetheless stuck in a time-warp of its own creation and suffers accordingly, notwithstanding it generally has its heart in the right place.
Adapted from a popular novel of the day by Abby Mann in a pre-Kojak assignment, it's difficult not to see Sinatra's Joe Leeming's battle-weary, incorruptible cop as a precursor to Mann's most famous invented character from the next decade. The plot too could have come from the TV show albeit with the utilisation of more adult themes, including the character of Sinatra's nymphomaniac wife (Lee Remick), the graphic depiction of the opening murder and execution of an innocent suspect, egged onto a false confession by a promotion-hungry Sinatra.
This is one of the problems of the script, with Sinatra set up from the start as a down-to-earth workaday detective but with a social conscience of course. So Frank gets to soapbox a lot about the ghetto and poverty on the one hand and corruption and cover-ups in high places on the other. Sinatra manfully tries to carry off this heavy load on his own, but can't help but look awkward when cajoling the damning confession from his suspect or as if he's memorised some of his equally damning speeches against the powers that be. Credit him for taking on a modernist role at odds, I'd have said, with his family-entertainer background.
There are a lot of big names in support, with Robert Duvall noteworthy as an over-zealous underling and Jack Klugman as Sinatra's trusted deputy. Sugar Ray Robinson has a fair old fight with his lines as an over-impressionable black colleague of Sinatra's, but I'm not sure I could award him the decision in the final reckoning.
Smoothly and occasionally stylishly directed by Gordon Jenkins, the film is nonetheless stuck in a time-warp of its own creation and suffers accordingly, notwithstanding it generally has its heart in the right place.