Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

GetPapa Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

jim_skreech Being a huge fan of gritty New York films from the 70s and 80s, I was quite excited to chance upon this film. Starring Robert Duvall, a stalwart of this era, and involving an angry cop in 70s NYC, I had my aims set high. Unfortunately, aside from some nice footage from the era, this felt to be a waste of time.Robert Duvall is a racist, grizzled cop, suspended from the force after a suspect falls off a roof whilst escaping arrest. Following his suspension, his partner Gigi turns up dead in Brooklyn with his throat cut. Turns out that Gigi had been doing some sneaky deals relating to a shipment of arms going to Puerto Rico.Badge 373 was notable for upsetting some of the Puerto Rican community, who had called for the film not to be released. Duvall's character is unpleasant, racist and not at all sympathetic, however, the Puerto Rican characters are mainly made up of hoodrats, petty criminals, crime bosses and junkie hookers, often Caucasians in brown make-up, and none at all redeemable. In the film's defence, the scene where Duvall visits a 'libra Puerto Rico!' rally does give valuable screen time to portray the pressures and frustrations that mainland US Puerto Ricans were facing at that time, and I get the feeling from this that the director did not intend to make a racist film, possibly even sympathetic towards Puerto Ricans, but just made an incredibly clumsy effort at portraying racial relations at that time.Coming from the year that gave us Serpico and The Seven-Ups, Badge 373 also feels very dated, even in comparison to Bullitt or Point Blank some 5 years earlier. The soundtrack and Batman-style fight scenes hark back to family friendly 60s TV shows like Dragnet or The Untouchables, the bus chase scene, for some the highlight of the film was well conceived, but is just goofy in practice, more reminiscent of one of the Smokey And The Bandit films.Badge 373 is a rather embarrassing watch, especially for Duvall who was in his prime as an actor at this time. Strictly only for genre completists.

Scarecrow-88 NYC detective Eddie Ryan(Robert Duvall)loses his badge after an incident involving the arrest of a "spic" goes awry(he falls from a building to the street below while trying to flee). He's an obvious racist whose disregard for certain ethnic groups gives him an unsavory reputation. Nonetheless, Eddie's a damn good cop and when his former partner, Gigi, is found brutally murdered(his throat is sliced open), he isn't about to let those responsible get away with it. He learns that Gigi wasn't no saint, in fact he was on the take, but Eddie can not allow his murderers to go free. Without a badge and gun, Eddie pursues the truth which involves a shipment of stolen machine guns, Puerto Rican revolutionaries(led by idealist Ruben Garcia, played with passion and conviction by Felipe Luciano), and a corrupt businessman, Sweet Williams(Henry Darrow). Eddie's big mistake, however, is dragging his beloved red-headed waitress girlfriend, Maureen(the alway superb Verna Bloom)into his vigilante quest for justice. With a strong performance from Eddie Egan as Lt. Scanlon, the one Eddie turns to when he discovers evidence that might lead to arrests. BADGE 373 may not be as memorable and as effective as other action thrillers loosely linked to THE FRENCH CONNECTION, but Duvall is always watchable. The only real chase scene is rather a funny one as Puerto Rican hoods pursue Eddie who has commandeered a bus! BADGE 373 is very much a plot-driven cop movie with political themes regarding the desperate acts to make a statement about the mistreatment of a race of people who feel justified to use violence to have their voices heard. Eddie must prevent the machine guns from leaving the New York harbor for Puerto Rico, plus Sweet William, who deals with anyone(even offering Eddie a job at one point), feels a sense of pride in this business transaction since he has feelings similar to Garcia regarding the plight of his people. BADGE 373 seems to be a rather obscure 70's detective street drama, even though it has a lead role by Duvall, maybe because it is more story-oriented instead of action-dependent.

sol1218 **SPOILERS** Tough talking and hard hitting undercover NYPD cop Eddie Ryan, Robert Duvall, goes a bit too far by working over this innocent Puerto Rican party goer whom he causes to jump to his death off a six floor building. This all happens in the first five minutes in the film "Badge 373", Eddie Ryan's police badge number, during an outrageous bust of a Puerto Rican social club where the worst thing going on there is a little pot smoking by some of the party goers.Suspended from the police department Eddie soon gets involved with this nationalist Puerto Rican group from the Bronx who are in the process of starting an armed revolt in their homeland. Supplied by a Harvard educated Puerto Rican hoodlum called Sweet William, Henry Darrow, the revolutionaries are expecting a shipment of over $3,000,000.00 in arms to achieve their aim.It turns out almost by accident that Eddie's partner officer Gigi Caputo, Louis Cusentino, got involved with this hooker Rita Garcia, Marina Dorell, while he was on suspension that lead to Gigi's murder. Gigi through Rita somehow got in cahoots with both Sweet William and the Puerto Rican revolutionaries and became a willing accomplice in their arms running racket. Eddie making it a point to avenge his late partners murder gets his unsuspecting girlfriend Maureen,Verna Bloom, involved with his personal crusade that in the end gets her killed as well by the revolutionaries.Eddie for his part goes all out, without a badge or the authority behind it, to stop Sweet William and his Puerto Rican revolutionaries headed by Rita's brother Ruban played by Fellipe Luciano, one of the founders of the Young Lords, from accomplishing their aims. During the course of the film Eddie gets worked over by the revolutionaries who after a wild car bus chase who, despite Eddie putting some dozen of them away, just put him in the hospital with a couple of broken bones.The film comes to it's very predictable final with Eddie getting the lowdown to where the arms supply is to be loaded on to, a freighter in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Catching the freighter's crew with it's pants down Eddie has them panic where Sweet William in a fit of insane rage guns down a totally befuddled Ruban Garcia who was killed just for having an emotional breakdown! Ruban just lost it's when the boat took off without the precious arms on board. Sweet Williams then wildly shoots up the fleeing freighters crew who had finally realized just what a bunch of lunatics, Sweet Williams & Co, that they were dealing with.With the entire Brooklyn North police force showing up at the port all they could do is just watch Eddie climb up, on a 150 foot crane, after a hysterical and totally out of it Sweet William for the films final and talky showdown. We get the usual BS story from Sweet Williams in how he lived better then any of those, the perusing cops, ever dream of living. Sweet William also hints that he'll be back,dead or alive, to continue the revolution even if it ends up killing him! This brain numbing harangue goes on and on until Eddie, with Sweet William unarmed and no threat to anyone, finally blows him away just to stop Sweet William from talking Eddie the police and movie audience to death with his boring and endless dialog.Sub-par "French Connection" follow up with the real hero of the "French Connection" Eddie Egan, as Eddie Ryan's friend and boss Lt. Scanlon, in the cast. Robert Duvall was a bit hard to take as suspended policeman Eddie Ryan taking on persons, by two's three's and even four's, twice as big as he is. Henry Darrow as ex-Puerto Rican hood and now full time freedom fighter Sweet William was a lot more effective in the little time that he was in the movie. The unrelenting violence as well as x-rated and racist dialog in the movie, by its screen writer the ultra-liberal newspaper columnist Pete Hamill, was so laughable and off the wall that it came across more comical, how could anyone take it seriously, then anything else.

inspectors71 Robert Duvall is one of my favorite people to watch on screen. He doesn't have a tremendously deep bag of tricks, but he's serious and earnest and I hope he keeps working for a long, long time. I say this partly because he's good and he has some more penance to do to make up for Badge 373, a perfect zero of a cops and robbers flick.What was Duvall thinking when he made this clichéd glob of TVish trash? He was coming off the glory of The Godfather. Did he just sign anything he could get his hands on thinking that with his stellar performance as Tom Hagen, people would flock to see him in anything? There's absolutely nothing likable about this movie. I enjoyed the big, muscular cars of the early 70's, but that's not enough to keep one's attention span from snapping pretty darn quickly. The cinematography was lifeless, the color was garish, the pacing and plotting and canned music were all dull, and there wasn't a single person, plot device, or line of dialogue that was the slightest bit interesting.I didn't care about Duvall's Eddie Ryan. The only character who even showed up on my radar was Verna Bloom, Ryan's girlfriend. She's a big, painted zoftig woman who looks utterly different in High Plains Drifter and Animal House. I liked her, but all she can do is squeal her Brooklyn accent, get hurt by Eddie, and die dramatically.The rest of the movie is just so much clichéd nonsense with one scene stacked on top another, giving Duvall a chance to spurt racial epithets, threaten revenge for his murdered partner (Oh, you didn't see it coming that Ryan's partner gets killed early on? Duh!), get thumped in a ludicrous bus/Puerto Rican gangster chase scene, practice to shoot with his left hand, drive some really cool Dodges and Plymouths, and have the worst case of thought bubble flashbacks to remind him and us why he's just going to have to blast the head bad guy when he corners him on some sort of crane.Howard Koch did some really good work in his career; here he directs an astonishingly bad mixture of R-rated cop movie and TV drama. The whole thing just looks so cheap and silly and you have to wonder just how many good movies Duvall will still need to make to cleanse his soul of the sin of Badge 373.