One Tough Cop

I really liked this movie! Mainly because of the performances by Stephen Baldwin as Bo Dietl and Chris Penn as his partner Duke!

One Tough Cop is a decent cop drama that has enough plot to keep you entertained, although I don't know how accurate the story is, but I wouldn't mind reading the book! ***1/2 out of *****

Another story about a cop (Bo Dietl) that tries to do his job while still hanging on to his friends from the neighborhood. The fact that they are all mobsters gives the FBI an opportunity to blackmail him into working for them. He refuses and almost loses his badge.

Stephen Baldwin (The Usual Suspects) play Dietl, trying to stay clear of the slime played by Amy Irving and Victor Slezak. Why she would take that role is beyond me. It stunk!

Of course, we have to have a hot babe, and who better to play that role that Gina Gershon (Bound, Love Matters, Sweet Revenge).

It was interesting seeing Captain Jim Brass (Paul Guilfoyle) playing a gangster role.

Based on a true character, it was OK, but you can probably find something better to watch.

top rate young turk actors, stephen baldwin and chris penn turn in painfully wooden portrayals of stereotypic undercover cops, baldwin: haunted good cop w/mafia boyhood friend and Penn: liqour/gambling addicted cop w/fatalist attitude...the FBI squeeze play is totally contrived, hackneyed and never advances the plot, the love interest sub-plot is under-developed and equally stilted...possibly the foreign (art film) director couldn't handle the material and/or properly motivate the cast...the subject matter and identical rape of a nun was masterfully done in "Bad Lieutenant" starring Harvey Keitel

The ads tout this movie as being "produced by the guy who brought you 'Serpico', 'Scarface', and others". About the only thing this movie shares with those two is the word %&#@!.

...this would have been better off as an HBO or Showtime Original, but I liked the biographical look at rogue New York Cop Bo Deitl. I confess, I heard him on the Howard Stern Show, and thought he was notes, but the movie is tightly and carefully plotted and the characters were believable. If the film has a fault, the plot is almost too tight. Good performances by Stephen Baldwin, Gina Gershon, and Mike McGlone. I liked the opening sequence okay as well. Come on, it's a cop movie, and a decent one at that.