Les superflics

After watching and enjoying "Super Cops" I read a bit about it and found that BOTH cops portrayed in the film were involved in some illegal activities....including prison time. So, while the movie might be true, it's also possible that the pair's exploits might be exaggerated a bit.

The story is not surprising, as it came out not too long after "Serpico", another film VERY critical of the NYPD and widespread corruption within the force. Both would make a nice double-feature.

The story is about two brand new cops, Officers Greenberg and Hantz. The pair are extremely eager, often working during their off hours. Oddly, in the film the pair are often yelled at or threatened with termination or an Internal Affairs investigation despite their many, many arrests. According to the film, this is because so many of the policemen are on the take or hate that the pair are so successful that it makes them look bad.

The story is most enjoyable and the film well made. I only wish the story had talked more about the pair's work AFTER the first few months they were on the force.

Ron Leibman and David Selby are Greenberg and Hantz, two new york city cops, going after the down and dirty, the drug rings around the city. And they are making plenty of enemies. Selby had done Dark Shadows, but this was an early film role for him. Leibman had a pretty big role in Norma Rae. And was married to Linda Lavin for ten years! The rookies want to be detectives fast, so they go looking for people to arrest. Which makes waves for the cops who just want to ride things out until retirement. Gritty city. But everytime they make progress (and arrests) they have to take one or two steps back becaused they have angered one of their own.or it might just be jealousy. Good stuff. Directed by Gordon Parks directed Shaft and Malcolm X, Learning Tree. Written by LH Whittemore.

The 60's loosened up movies a lot. It became okay, for example, to show crooked cops and real poverty. Older Hollywood in its preoccupation with glamour and the Cold War naturally shied away from such inflammatory topics. But the cultural revolt of the Vietnam period insisted on "telling it like it is", and I take this movie to be one of its products.

Greenberg (Leibman) and Hantz (Selby) are a couple of rookie cop hotshots who rock the precinct boat with their zeal and unorthodox style. Too bad we never learn what in their backgrounds drives them. Instead, the movie follows them on their exploits without explaining much of anything. It's kind of like watching a collection of sports highlights without the developmental threads of a narrative.

Still, the movie never drags or bores, plus the gritty shots of ghetto life are worth the admission price alone. Then too, the screenplay sure doesn't glamorize either the typical cop or precinct life generally. The "feel" here is of the real thing, one of the film's genuine strengths.

Unlike most films, however, none of the movie's characters are particularly likable. In fact, I agree with the reviewer who found the quirky Greenberg annoying, while the subdued Hantz remains something of a cypher. Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with this, except by the end, the two appear just the same as they were at the beginning. In short, all the murder, mayhem and human misery have affected them not at all, one way or the other.

All in all, the movie's an okay entry in the post-Serpico sweepstakes. Yet, despite its down-and-dirty look at urban policing, the story never manages any needed depth, despite the richness of the material.

Glad to finally enjoy this movie for the first time uncut and unedited. I must have seen this right after it came to television in the mid-70s; one of my favorite movies when I was a kid. This may have been the first Rob Leibman movie I ever saw. I just wanted to note, one thing that gave me pause when I was younger was that the Pat Corley scenes were odd, something didn't seem right. Knowing him now as the actor famous for his gravely voice it appears to be that they replaced his recorded dialog with a voiceover. Interesting choice, kind of like putting Fran Drescher in a production and dubbing her with Sarah Jessica Parker.

This is based on the true story of two rookie NYC cops whose exploits earned them the nicknames "Batman" and "Robin" in the 70s. Ron Leibman stars as David Greenberg (Batman) and David Selby stars as Robert Hantz (Robin). These two rock the boat right away by making drug arrests on their days off. Naturally, this doesn't sit well with the other crooked cops who don't like to be made to look bad. The duo find themselves in all sorts of scenarios from stopping hit men out to kill them (true story) to beating up a purse snatcher who turns out to be a high ranking cop (not so true story). Directed by Gordon Parks and written by Lorenzo Semple Jr., THE SUPER COPS never really finds the right footing. With hard hitting cop dramas like DIRTY HARRY, THE FRENCH CONNECTION and SERPICO coming out in the previous years, it is kinda hard to imagine how audiences reacted to this. The cops are played as goofballs with Ron Liebman, a dead ringer for John Astin, being truly annoying. At the same time, there is some hard hitting stuff about corrupt police and the system. Interestingly, the film opens with footage of the two real cops receiving commendations from a character portray as crooked (by Pat Hingle) in the film. Even more interesting, the two cops apparently both fell on the wrong side of the law several years after this film was made.