14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
SINATRA'S BEST 1960's DRAMA, March 31, 2005
Stark and brutal for its' time, THE DETECTIVE, was Frank Sinatra's best drama of the 1960's(THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE belongs to Laurence Harvey and Angela Lansbury). This is a story of tortured people keenly told focucusing on wwo main plots: a homosexual murder and the connected subplot involving an urban housing scandal. Both are well woven into a gritty storyline that is stronger that the written work of Roderick Thorp. The most effective visuals: ugly police tactics that lead to the execution of a wrongfully convicted petty criminal, convincingly played by Tony Musante, in one of his first screen roles and the stench of 1960's NYPD corruption. Sinatra is outstanding in the lead role, showing a realm of extreme emotions: dogged, rigged, self righteous, guilt ridden, defeated. Credible support comes from William Windom, Jack Klugman , Robert Duvall as a racist, homophobic cop and Ralph Meeker as a snivler, to whom Sinatra gives a beat down.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Friends of a certain persuasion.", October 11, 2010
I was surprised to discover that Roderick Thorp's writings inspired this realistic, gritty cop drama AND
Die Hard, yet somehow, it makes sense.
THE DETECTIVE is a well-acted 1968 film that broke new ground---sometimes shattered it. Frank Sinatra is Joe Leland, a veteran NYPD Detective, who is assigned to investigate the brutal mutilation murder of the gay son of the richest real estate developer in New York City.
THE DETECTIVE tries to address its subject sympathetically. In the course of doing so, however, it taps into every gay stereotype. It actually taps into almost every stereotype, and yet, overall, it works. Impossibly dated now, THE DETECTIVE is a fly in the amber. Men are still wearing hats and women white gloves.
From the outset, THE DETECTIVE throws us off balance. Sinatra, tough-talking out of the side of his mouth, plays Joe Leland like a liberal Joe Friday, stolid, fair, and "square." His opening gambit, "Penis cut off...fingers shredded" was absolutely shocking for the time, and put THE DETECTIVE into the realm of film noir right from the beginning. Leland's investigation carries us through a nether world where (as the script describes them) "closet queens" have secret dalliances with other men.
THE DETECTIVE relies on Havelock Ellis' groundbreaking but inaccurate early 20th Century research into human sexuality to explain sexual orientation: "There are no bisexuals," proclaims the film's noted psychiatrist, "only homosexuals with no sense of commitment to their creed." Gay men as portrayed in this film are all grotesquely "swish." The film is an outsider, looking in on a world it presupposes exists in a certain way. Still, THE DETECTIVE tries to make a serious social statement.
The script is full of words never heard before onscreen. Scenes of men mouth kissing stunned 1968 audiences. The gay subculture is portrayed as uniformly smarmy (more as a result of being driven underground than anything intrinsic).
The Cop Universe around Joe Leland is both anachronistic and brutal. Jack Klugman plays the Bill Gannon role, as Dave, Joe's thoughtful sometime partner. Most of the cops in Leland's NYPD are on the take. This was still a world where the boys in blue gave suspects the Third Degree. A suspected child molester is interrogated naked in the Station House. "Breaks 'em down," the token Black cop (played by Sugar Ray Robinson) explains. "I saw it in a newsreel on German Concentration Camps(!)."
The police routinely brutalize the gay men they find lurking in dark alleyways. Robert Duvall plays a particularly relentless homophobic cop, to whom the word "fag" is practically an honorific. He specializes in unprovoked beatings of his "queer" arrestees. The Department ME says, "Twenty years on The Job and those people still make me sick," to which Leland responds, "They don't bother me. I got my own bag."
Joe Leland's bag is his wife Karen, played by the strikingly beautiful Lee Remick. Ms. Remick has a class and ease onscreen that current-day actresses simply cannot match. Karen, who grew up in orphanages, yearns toward Joe (and he toward her), but cannot overcome a deep-rooted self-destructive psychological compulsive need to seduce other men. Although Joe and Karen are separated, it makes little difference. They clearly love one another and spend much, frustrating, time together.
Joe is a decent man and a good cop, but even he isn't immune to his environment. He coerces a spurious confession from a "psycho" gay muscleman (Tony Musante in his first role) who goes to The Chair for the murder even though Joe knows he's innocent.
Joe is promoted for closing the case. Not long after, Joe is visited by Jacqueline Bisset, whose husband has mysteriously committed suicide. Joe then discovers that he committed the murder, which is tied into a high-level real estate scam involving the Mayor.
Joe's sense of justice is outraged. "Those people up in the ghetto are tired of living in garbage cans! It's our job to sit on the lid of those garbage cans! And when the lid blows off, brother, we are going to be in for it!"
The sincere Liberalism of THE DETECTIVE is what makes it work, despite its repeated references to "those people." Gifted screenwriter Abby Mann takes a subject which was absolutely forbidden and brings it into the light with the best of intentions. Although THE DETECTIVE tends to be ham-handed, Sinatra plays it well, without parodying himself. It is instructive to remember that this film was the first of its kind. It tried to humanize its characters and subject. If it did a flawed job, it still set our feet on the right path.
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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"Tough, "Gritty" "Retro" and "Square!", May 29, 2005
Someone wandering into a showing of "The Detective" in 1968, after a movie absence of say a year or so, might well have not beleived what they were seeing or hearing.
The film broke a certain amount of new ground at the time as it depicted somewhat graphically the mutilation murder of a homosexual.....one of Sinatra's first lines of dialouge as New York detective Joe Leland is "penis cut off....fingers shredded....."
Despite the first time utterances of screen obscenities and its dabbling in the worlds of homosexuality and nyphomania, the "Detective" felt somewhat square and retro even at the time of its initial release--could be all those New York cops in snap brim hats running around calling homosexuals "fags" and the Jerry Goldmsith score with that lonely trumpet right out of 40's film-noir--one has to remember this was also the film era of "Easy Rider" and "The Graduate"
Screenwriter Abby Mann puts so many liberal platitudes in Sinatra's mouth, there are times in the film when he sounds more like a crusading social worker than a tough cop--"there are things to fight for, and I can't fight for them while I'm here.."
In any case "The Detective" provided Sinatra with one of his better roles in the 60's although that trademark fedora made him look older than his 52 years at the time, and the supporting cast (especially Lee Remick as Leland's nymphomaniac wife) is fine.
It might also be worth noting that "The Detective" played a part in the breakup of Sinatra's marriage to Mia Farrow.
Farrow was originally scheduled to play the part of Norma Mc Iver but scheduling problems with "Rosemary's Baby" led to the role going to the beautiful Jacqueline Bissett (sporting a Mia-type short hairdo)and to Mia being served with separation papers on the "Rosemary" set.
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There are no special features to speak of on the new Fox DVD except for some trailers for "Tony Rome" and "Lady In Cement,"
the lightweight prviate eye films Frank made before and after shooting "The Detective"
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