Redada

I really enjoyed the Dragnet television shows back in the 1950s with Jack Webb and Ben Alexander and later Harry Morgan. They were very entertaining and fast-moving. I say that because this feature-length film was just too boring to add to my collection. I wouldn't watch it again.

Oh, it started off with a bang as a man was murdered in a field, but then the rest of it is mostly detail work which gets pretty boring after 40 minutes! Some of the dialog is good: nice '40s-type film noir stuff.

What I missed was the humor of the TV show, in which Webb and his partner, Officer Frank Smith, would interview a number of crackpots and those interviews would be funny. Most of the characters in this movie did not invoke laughs. It needed a bit more action, too, for a crime movie.

... where the story told had a shorter running time. Jack Webb's interviewing and telling off of suspects just seems to drag - pardon the expression -when it's done in a 90-minute feature film.

A small-time hood, Miller Starkie, is mowed down by a shotgun blast, and detectives Joe Friday (Jack Webb) and Frank Smith (Ben Alexander) are on the case. They interview a variety of other small-time hoods that might have possibly had something to do with the killing. They also get policewoman Grace Downey to go under-cover and infiltrate the nightclub of mobster Max Troy. But the case has an ironic ending.

This case was particularly interesting because the victim was a career criminal and the most likely suspects were also career criminals. At one point, when Joe Friday asks a witness to come to a line-up of suspects, the witness points that out as a reason he does not want further involvement. The witness says that with this entire thing possibly being underworld stuff, he is afraid for his safety. Friday gives him a public service announcement as an answer, but nothing that would soothe his nerves.

Dragnet was at the tail end of its lifespan as a radio show when this film was released-the radio show aired from 1949 to 1955 - and its radio heritage shows. For example, the dialogue says more than it has to say about what's going on, as if you can't see anything, and every time something particularly important is said, the score is emphatic, telling the viewer what they should be feeling in this particular instance - sadness, sympathy, shock, etc.

If you like Dragnet in either its radio or TV incarnation, you'll probably find this worth your while.

"Dragnet" was the first theatrical feature to be based on a successful television series. Too bad its script bears little relation to the elements of that show.

In the 1952-59 series, viewers never saw the crime being committed. "Dragnet" was a mystery program; Sgt. Friday and Officer Smith would be called in to solve a crime, then locate and arrest the guilty party/parties. (As Webb put it, "This makes YOU a cop, and you unwind the story.") "Dragnet" (1954) begins with the actual crime, so that we KNOW who's guilty even before the titles appear. The movie is no mystery, merely the depiction of a murder investigation, in toto.

Worse, the Sgt. Friday in this film is not the quiet, dedicated cop of the radio and TV original. The feature marks the beginning of Friday the Supercop, the holier-than-thou sergeant never without a wisecrack for the criminal ("Unless you're growin', sit down!") or a put-down for the recalcitrant citizen ("Mr. Friday, if you was me, would you [testify]?" "Can I wait awhile... before I'm you?").

The film was a huge box office success, the most profitable of Webb's five theatrical productions. It cost a hair over $500,000 to make, and took in nearly six million. It was Warner's second-highest grossing film of 1954, after "The High and the Mighty." And, of course, it opened the door for the TV crossovers that continue to this day. It's just a shame that the "real" Sgt. Friday didn't appear, and an even bigger shame that this 'evil twin' eventually eclipsed the original.

This film is so true to the atmosphere of the 1950's that you could show it in a history class, but it's a lot of fun. Jack Webb is fantastically straight as Joe Friday; he never had a better role. He speaks every word with a cement-like conviction; he's always got a snappy answer for every sarcastic criminal. Everyone in the movie is great, but the standouts are Virginia Gregg as the murdered man's alcoholic and handicapped wife, Stacy Harris as Max Troy, insincere head of the crime syndicate, and Richard Boone as the police captain, who says to his men with angry authority "all right, bumper to bumper tail; get up with em in the morning and put em to bed at night".

I agree with the other comments that it is somewhat disappointing that we already know the identity of the killer at the beginning, but it is obvious that the killing was shown so that we know Friday and Smith aren't harassing an innocent man throughout the movie. And harass they do. Because we know the killer, we can laugh they way Friday and Smith do when they frisk him four times a day and tailgate his car. The main problem with the movie is that the story just isn't as interesting as most of the stories of the television episodes were, and, as someone wrote, Friday is a different, tougher man, not as likeable as before. Another unfortunate thing is that in making the movie in color to attract audiences who had only seen "Dragnet" in black-and-white, the movie loses the stark film noir feel that many of the television episodes had. In addition, the movie was made when the television series started to bring more silly comedy into it, and, as a result, the movie contains far too much of it. The early episodes had a lot of dark humor, but not silly humor like this movie does, such as the scene with the big-busted singer, and the scene in which the bystanders watch Friday and Smith frisk Max Troy. Even Friday's one-liners aren't as darkly funny or clever as they are in the early television episodes. That said, the movie is still very interesting and rather entertaining if you give it a chance. Webb directs with a nice pace and the big production gives it a grand atmosphere that the television show can't capture. Had a "Dragnet" movie been done in black-and-white, with a more accessible story, and during the 1951-52 season when the only comedy was dark comedy, the movie would have been a bonafide classic.