Donald Buehler
A romp thru the 70's. One of my best buddies introduced this 70's detective flick to me - and I really enjoyed it. Not knowing who was in it beyond Michael Moriarity and Yaphet Kotto, it was fun naming the future stars of both the little and big screen in this film. HInt: there are at least 5, not including Moriarity and Kotto.The story line is fairly predictable including the "shocking" ending, but there are some great scenes: crippled beggar hitching a ride on a taxi in Times Square (can you say Michael J Fox in Back to The Future?); face to face "mexican standoff" in an small elevator (Reservoir Dogs redux - without all the F words); roof top chase on foot - except in this case a slow limping white boy catches the slim athletic black guy (not gonna happen) - reminiscent of free running opening scene in Casino Royale.And finally in the predictable "hang the cop out to dry" scene Michael Moriarity implicates himself far better than any interrogator ever could! Pretty hilarious!But, all in all, an enjoyable experience. The more I think about it, this was a ground-breaking movie that predates some of the classics we all love - and introduced some great future stars. So let's give some credit to this 70's epic. DonB
paul vincent zecchino
Yeah. You gotta see this film. No, I mean like you gotta. Like now. So go do it, alright? Or else we got nothing', talk about.Yeah, OK, I know, ain't the greatest film going', far from it, fact.But hey, you like them late 60's - early 70's Land Arks they called cars? Everybody does, right? I know I do. Most my buddies do, too. I drove 'em. And you did, too. Huge Chryslers with massive Big-Block 383's with 'Purple Cams'. Awesome Plymouths rigged out with 440 Interceptors, headers, and dead quiet Imperial Mufflers that could stomp any one these dreary green electro-turkeys what they drive today. These cars were big, fast, mean, and required a state the size, Idaho, there, pull a '180 at speed but so what? They were long, comfy, and powerful because they weren't smog motor dogs like them late 70s - early 80s rats, were they? Nor did cars in "Report to the Commissioner" need computer geek tricks to get out of their own way, the way these 'hybrids' that resemble elephant suppositories do today, right? They'd kick the snot out of any four-cylinder phony what thought he was hot stuff, couldn't they? That's why you see 'em, this film, isn't it? You know it.And, hey, you like Industrial Archaeology? Is Urban Exploration your secret passion? You get off, spooking around inside boarded-up factories, power plants, and nut houses? Then you gonna dig this film. Why? Because it was shot during the depressed 70s when Manhattan hit the skids that them Coward-Piven commies greased up for them, special. Decrevalent old buildings with bricks in need of pointing and windows that cried out for glazing were crowned by wooden water tanks that seeped rusty ooze, across whose roofs cops shot it out with thugs.Junkies abounded. They drooled. They yammered. They accosted citizens who took out their aggressions on double-amputees who scurried about on roller-creepers. This in turn whelped to an entire genre of ghoulish Gahan Wilson cartoons.Yaphet Kotto, the son of a Crown Prince of Cameroon - don't take my word for it, go look it up on this site, already, what, I got to do your homework too, crying out loud? - commands this film in which a young Michael Moriarity plays the reluctant detective.And the Precinct House? Oh, you're one these kids, here, thinks 'The Job' is about cops who dress up in sexy leotards, whisper at one another in sterile luxury CSI suites while computers solve their cases?Yeah. Well, think again. Wake up, smell the Kerosene, there, Poochie.Real Precinct houses stunk like B.O., cigar smoke, junkie-sweat, cordite, and stuff ya can't write about here - use your imagination, if video games haven't erased it by now. Cops typed reports on ancient clattering Underwoods, using two fingers to do so, as arrestees who stunk like Hoagies bounced around inside cages next, the cops' desks, and caterwauled like moonstruck werewolves.Dispatchers called cops on real VHF and UHF analog radios, not today's commie-punk '800 megahertz trunked digital' kluges that crash every time some Park Avenue socialite passes gas in the drawing room. From where I lived, Point Judith, Rhode Island, you could hear NYPD calls two hundred miles away. How'd I do that? 'cause my friend John S_____. up the road, Wakefield, was doin' it since Joseph Petrosino walked a beat that's how, and he showed me. You got any more questions? Yeah. You gotta see this film. After readin' this, I think you maybe now understan' a little better how come, right? Am I right?Paul Vincent ZecchinoManasota Key, Florida08 November, 2009
bkoganbing
Report to the Commissioner is a film about a misfit detective who does not heed the warning of his senior partner and gets himself into one beautiful jackpot as Andy Sipowicz would put it. It's an underrated classic film from the seventies with an interesting cast and a lot of good performances.Abby Mann wrote the original screenplay of Report to the Commissioner and Mann who is famous for writing Judgement at Nuremberg also is the creator of that classic police series Kojak from the seventies. The film does have a Kojak feel to it. Shooting the thing entirely on location in New York really helps with the believability of the plot.Michael Moriarty plays a young and very naive detective assigned to what looks to be the Midtown North Precinct in Manhattan. He comes from a police family and he's assigned to partner with Yaphett Kotto who worked with Moriarty's father.At the same time Susan Blakely is a young, fresh faced, but most experienced detective whose all American good looks fool a lot of perpetrators. She decides to get close to a big time drug dealer played by Tony King to get the goods on him.To make her cover as a runaway sound feasible, higher up captain Hector Elizondo has Moriarty make some routine inquiries looking for Blakely under her street name of Chicklet. The only problem is that Moriarty takes the assignment way too seriously, earnestly trying to win respect among his peers. It results in tragedy all around.The cast is really finely tuned in this film. Especially Elizondo who will chill you with his attitude. He turns in a fine performance as a bureaucratic cop real good at department politics, but a real snake as a human being.In one of his earliest roles is William Devane who has only one scene in the film questioning Moriarty about what's happened. Devane's a hotshot Assistant District Attorney who's practically salivating over a homicide conviction, another scalp for his lodgepole so to speak. You will remember him.Report to the Commissioner is a nice look at the Seventies in New York and a great police drama. You will agree that Yaphett Kotto gave Moriarty the best advice about knowing the players in a given situation.
