Reviews

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 While burdened with some now rather outdated representations of homosexuality (what plot there is revolves around the homophobic murder of a gay man), the film's heart is nevertheless in the right place.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.

After a lively if predictable opening bank-heist scene, 'Set It Off' plummets straight into the gutter and continues to sink. This is a movie that deals in nasty, threadbare stereotypes instead of characters, preposterous manipulation instead of coherent plotting, and a hideous cocktail of cloying sentimentality and gratuitous violence instead of thought, wit or feeling. In short, it's no different from 90% of Hollywood product. But it's the racial angle that makes 'Set It Off' a particularly saddening example of contemporary film-making. Posing as a celebration of 'sistahood', the film is actually a celebration of the most virulent forms of denigrating Afican-American 'gangsta' stereotype. The gimmick this time is that the gangstas are wearing drag. Not only does the film suggest that gangsterism is a default identity for all African Americans strapped for cash or feeling a bit hassled by the Man, it presents its sistas as shallow materialists who prize money and bling above all else. Worse, 'Set It Off' exploits the theme of racial discrimination and disadvantage simply as a device to prop up its feeble plot structure. Serious race-related social issues are wheeled on in contrived and opportunistic fashion in order to justify armed robbery, then they're ditched as soon as the film has to produce the inevitably conventional ending in which crime is punished, the LAPD turns out to be a bunch of caring, guilt-ridden liberals (tell that to Rodney King), and aspirational 'good' sista, Jada Pinkett Smith, follows the path of upward mobility out of the 'hood and into a world of middle-class self-indulgence opened up for her by her buppie bank-manager boyfriend. 'Set It Off' illustrates the abysmal state of the contemporary blaxploitation film, pandering to mindless gangsta stereotypes and pretending to celebrate life in the 'hood while all the time despising it. While the likes of 'Shaft' and 'Superfly' in the 1970s might have peddled stereotypes and rehashed well-worn plots, they had a freshness, an energy and an innocence that struck a chord with audiences of all races and still makes them fun to watch. 'Set It Off' wouldn't be worth getting angry over if wasn't a symptom of the tragic decline and ghettoisation of African-American film-making since the promising breakthrough days of the early 1990s.