Prismark10 Directed by Peter Hyams, Busting apparently inspired the television show Starsky & Hutch. It was released at a similar time as Freebie and the Bean which was commercially more successful but Busting is more tighter, coherent and cynical picture that still retains elements of its comedy.Keneely (Elliott Gould) tall, laconic and chews gum all the time and Farrel (Robert Blake) shorter and tougher are two LA vice cops who spend most of their time arresting hookers and people in gay bars rather than than the big crime lords who they feel are being protected by their superior officers and cynical lawyers.They decide to go all out to catch the local crime lord Rizzo (Allen Garfield) which annoys their superiors who prefer they go after the small fry.The film has a comedic and anarchic tone but beneath the cynicism it also has a heart of two cops trying to do the right thing and not happy with just fitting up hookers and their clients.There are thrills as well with well staged shootout sequences in a market and later in a hospital. The film is a softer and sarcastic edged version of The French Connection featuring elements of a buddy cop duo and a message that crime does pay.

moonspinner55 Elliott Gould and Robert Blake are a surprisingly affable team in this blood-spattered crime-flick written and directed by Peter Hyams, which stays loose and shaggy and doesn't wrap itself up too much in seriousness or pretensions (until the finale). Two Los Angeles vice cops, tired of seeing their prize busts going unrewarded by a police commissioner who is on the take from a sleazy crime czar, use their down-time to shake up the kingpin, whom they are sure is about to pull off a major drug exchange. The leads are a lot of fun, particularly Gould, and Hyams keeps the camera moving-moving-moving until you feel convinced he must have his cinematographer strapped to the back of a motorcycle. There are the usual cheap shots, titillation asides, a blatantly moronic judge, and the proverbial exasperated sergeant who keeps saying things like, "My ass will be in a sling!" Hyams is really tough on Los Angeles, and one might come away from the picture asking: if the police force were so corrupt, wouldn't that be a bigger story than the one we're getting? Still, the combination of good performances, an interesting script, a goofy undermining, and a down-and-dirty scenario makes the movie a rowdy ride with exciting sequences. **1/2 from ****

Thomas Rucki "Busting" is a satire disguised as a hard-boiled thriller that depicts the daily miseries and frustrations of L.A. Vice Squad police officers Keneely (Elliot Gould) and Farrel (Robert Blake) deprived of a social life--see the apartment and the dry living condition of Keneely--and a decent salary that makes arrogant "nouveau riche" big shot Rizzo (Allen Garfield) laugh at (to avenge, they burn Rizzo's fancy car during his birthday party in a grand restaurant), hence both Vice Squad cops' rage and anger to catch him in the act and send him to jail. Keneely and Farrel are sick and tired of the absurdity of their job that lead them to a dead-end: their superiors are corrupted (see the intercourse with their chief in a dark office). Both cops curse to unwind and are obliged to transgress the law to enforce it and they foresee a character as Travis Bickle from "Taxi Driver". The moral of the film is that society is rotten in all directions and at every levels. The film offers a desperate sarcastic tone with some flourished language (see the juicy dialogs). The look is gritty, realistic, raw, naturalistic. Thanks to director Peter Hyams, it features a great pace and contains solid action scenes (among other things: the supermarket's gunfight, the ambulance chase) that give it a documentary stamp. Besides, composer Billy Goldenberg's colorful and distorted score (with echo a la Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew") perfectly fits the style of the story: streetwise, suspense-laden, terse, low-key, hectic, funky, furious, chaotic and slick. It is a pessimistic painting of the urban society, full of freaks and danger: a masseuse from a sex-shop, a nude dancer from a sex nigh-club, fags and drags from a private bar, call-girls and hookers, pimps, hustlers, thugs, gangsters, hired-killers, liberal lawyers that defend criminals, crooked officials of the State. And the worst thing, you burst to laugh at this terrible vision. The ending encapsulates the plight of Keneely who announces his job's change throughout a freeze frame of his face. In today's mentality, this film can be classified as politically incorrect because of the "direct" language and the depicted methods. I file "Busting" with the top 1970's cop and robber films: "Dirty Harry", "Magnum Force", "The Getaway", "The French Connection", "The Seven-Ups", "Charley Varrick", "The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three".

rosscinema This was Peter Hyams directorial debut and he does show some of the elements that would later make him a very good filmmaker. Elliott Gould and Robert Blake play two vice cops who are tired of they're job until they try and bust a hooker (Cornelia Sharpe) and are told that she has connections with a local mob boss (Allen Garfield) and because of that she won't be prosecuted. So then they decide to check him and his operations out. What I think hurts the film is that its so predictable and its just another cop film from the seventies. Nothing that special. Gould and Blake use the usual cop banter when they talk and then there is the obligatory scene with Gould in his rundown cheap apartment. Every cop film has this scene. Of course the Sgt in charge of them keeps telling them both he's heard complaints about them and you have to have at least one car chase. There is one impressive scene and its where they chase three bad guys out of a building and into a supermarket. Its done in one continuous shot and its accompanied by an effective piece of music. Its a very well done scene and very well choreographed. The same music is heard during the ambulance chase scene. Football player Carl Eller has a scene where he beats up Gould and how about Blake calling Garfield "Spanky"! Hyams would later direct better films than this and while this film does have some decent moments (Like Gould on the stand!) its still not up to par with a lot of the cop films of the seventies.