Amazon.com
Though
Hill Street Blues got all the awards and
Miami Vice got all the attention, for some viewers it's the short-lived
Crime Story (the second series produced by
Vice's Michael Mann) that stands as tall as the great cop show of the 1980s. Set to a gritty rock & roll beat--with Del Shannon's "Runaway" providing the perfect theme song--the series chronicled the early '60s rise of gangster Ray Luca (Anthony John Dennison) and his hounding by hard-boiled policeman Michael Torrello (Denis Farina, who will never have another part this good). Save for the show's eventual relocation to Las Vegas, the Chicago-based pilot, expertly helmed by cult director Abel Ferrara, lines up all the elements that made
Crime Story a classic: vivid performances, slick photography, brutal violence, and a genuine sense of the moral murk cops can be sucked into when they feel that any method is justified. Indeed, it's often Torrello, given to back-alley beatings and possessive stares at his wife (Darlanne Fleugel), who seems the scarier of the two leads; Luca kills without compunction, but with an assassin's dispassionate celerity. Such complexity, combined with the exciting action scenes, makes for wonderful viewing, however much it hurt with the Nielsen ratings.
--Bruce Reid
Product Description
Chicago, 1963: Lieutenant Mike Torello (Dennis Farina) is a hair-triggered cop who can bend the law and pummel punks in the same breath. Ray Luca (Anthony Denison) is a ruthless young gangster on the rise in the vicious Chicago underworld. Together, these two desperate men will turn the streets of Chicago into their own personal battlefield of justice, revenge, and murder. David Caruso, Stephen Lang, Darlanne Fluegel, and Bill Campbell co-star in this stunning pilot feature from executive producer Michael Mann (Miami Vice, Heat) and director Abel Ferrara (King of New York, Fear City) that launched the cult classic television series.
