Spur der Gewalt

I caught part of this 1973 flick one late night on TNT. I was intrigued because it was supposed to be Peter Hyams' first theatrical effort. So I went out and bought a copy on VHS. At first this film may not seem much. Just an updated version of the old police procedurals from the 1940s and 50s. But after a couple more viewings I was hooked. There's a certain indescribable quality to it (see Walter Hill's "The Driver" and you'll know what I mean). A hang-dog, left coast version of the French Connection. Very laid back, but deadly serious. The viewer feels the same frustrations the Gould-Blake teams feels in the up-hill struggle to rid their beat of society's scum. The duo risks life, limb, and personal and professional humiliation trying to nail the vile crime boss and galvanize indifferent peers and supervisors. Brisk dialogue, thoughtful direction, excellent photography by Earl Rath, sleazy LA locales and a fine cast make this forgotten film a winner. Give it a try!

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.

Gee… doesn't the 70s have some cracking crime thrillers… some of these even fall in the cracks, which this one undeservedly does and in which case I would put it down as one of the best the decade had to offer. Writer / director Peter Hyams' debut feature "Busting" is an excellently pitched comedy thriller with outstanding performances by Elliott Gould and Robert Blake as two Los Angeles vice squad officers Michael Keneely and Patrick Farrel who rage a war against a well-respected crime kingpin Carl Rizzo (Allen Garfield), but also find themselves fighting corruption inside the force for their constant harassing of Rizzo. There they decide if it means doing things outside the book, well they'll do it to get their man.

The surefooted plot might seem dated and rather routine (frustrated cops battling criminals and the law, in which they feel like they are fighting a lost cause), but the innovative script is constantly witty / stinging in its observations (that especially goes for its downbeat, but ironic conclusion) and the chemistry between Gould and Blake simply ignites. The narrative seems to be strung together by sporadic plot threads, but there's a certain awkwardness to its cynical approach that just makes it so odd. The interchanges between the two cops and also with Garfield are bitingly dry, but enjoyably so. While there's a playful tongue-in-cheek style, it can be exhaustingly aggressive (you know the brutality featuring red paint) and edgy. Hyams skilfully stages the lean action with gritty, but frenetic authenticity as the bombastic score kicks in. Watch how the camera-work always instinctively moves around, like it has a mind of its own by following the action with numerous tracking shots. Just look at the relentlessly thrilling market store shootout / chase. Earl Rath does a hypnotic job behind the camera. Hyams keeps it snappy and makes great use of the grungy urban setting and seedy strips that really do bring the film to life. The cast are fantastic in their roles. Garfield reeks of confidence and the support features the likes of William Sylvester, Logan Ramsey, Michael Learner, Antonio Fargas, Corbelia Sharpe and the dominating Sid Haig as Rizzo's bouncer.

"Gotta stay alive man. Gotta stay alive."

Busting is a cop show encapsulated, purely episodic in structure as the two vice cop heroes team on various assorted cases, with unstable degrees of success. It's in keeping with the refreshing realism of this period in the film's genre, as it's exceedingly cynical, robustly indicating that crime does pay, and that the biggest criminals in society are dishonest politicians and businessmen who will never be penalized. Were the production not as befuddled and awkward, this rather poorly titled actioner could easily rank among the two French Connections, Bullitt and the Dirty Harry series.

Against an abrasive cityscape of backstreets and littered alleyways, Elliott Gould and Robert Blake star as vagabond vice squad detectives, the type who in actuality set the judicial system back decades. Elliott Gould, the tall one, incessantly chews bubble gum, ambles somewhat hunched and talks in the manner of someone fashioning himself on the star of an Elliott Gould movie, which is awesome. Robert Blake, an unlit cigarette inexplicably hanging from his lips, behaves like a guy who wishes he were tall and realizes he never will be. It doesn't trouble him, though it makes him a bit less compromising than most guys.

Gould and Blake inhabit their work lock, stock and barrel. They consume most of their time apprehending people who are more of a perceived threat to society than a real one: call girls, massage parlor staff and gay bar regulars. It's simply what they do to keep the wheels turning, like road cleaners. It's one of the existential quirks of Busting that when the vice boys do get mixed up in their work, when they find themselves pursuing the Mr. Big accountable for the considerable multi-million-dollar L.A. rackets in addition to the trivial ones, they get thumped, both by the crooks and by their Police Department superiors who may, it would seem, stand for the posture of the society whose protectors they are: The action sooner or later gets around to charging Allen Garfield, cast as a local peer of the realm, with practically all illegal goings-on in town. Garfield, as ever an exceptional actor, brings poise and a sense of being wholly together to the role.

As bemused as the Philip Marlowe Gould interpreted a year before in Altman's brilling Long Goodbye, this 1974 film was the first film by Hyams. His aptitude as a director is more apparent in this film than in any other he's done perhaps, especially in the visual highlights and in the performances. I have an idea that that the qualities of Gould and Blake, instead of the screenplay, are answerable for the distinctness provided the roles. They try a bit too hard for idiosyncrasy and funny habit, nonetheless they're effective at establishing particular characters.

Hyams engineered something of an achievement by crafting a rough cop film sans taking advantage of the right-wing scorn that warns us all to arm ourselves. I.e., it recognizes that when cops and robbers are firing guns at each other in open places, the lookers-on aren't impervious to the bullets. When Gould and Blake chase some heroin pushers through a supermarket in a continuous gunfight, the movie shares the panic of the bystanders to the extent that it does the tension of the pursuit. It's this plane of alertness that secedes this possibly pioneering buddy cop picture from the subsequent second-hand goods in marketeering mockery of the genre that was given that healthy dose of gritty reality in the 1970s, not only by transcendent pictures like The French Connection and classics like Dirty Harry, but even bargains like Busting.

I almost got to see "Busting" in the theater. I was 9 years old and my brother was 7 and we were with our father seeing the other half of a double feature. After that ended we begged him to let us stay and see the R rated "Busting". He agreed. We only lasted five minutes. It takes about that long before the lady gets naked in the dentist's office. "Let's go". I've seen "Busting" quite a few times since then and it's one of the greatest cop movies to come out of the 1970s. Writer/director Peter Hyams (One of my favorites) does an excellent job. The camera work is terrific. The cast is top-notch with excellent performances from Elliott Gould and Robert Blake. Gould has never been better. Every time I watch "Busting" it's so good that I forget that I've seen it already.