Report to the Commissioner

I was one of the many bystanders who witnessed part of the major scene which took place on location in front of and inside Sak's 5th Avenue in Manhattan, a lunch hour that turned into two. I believe it was based on a true event and is documented in the NYPD files.As for the movie it was one of the best and well acted movies of the seventies in my opinion. I have been trying to get a copy of it for years.The movies involves a screw-up that leaves a female undercover cop dead because the brass feel asleep and later looked for and found a scapegoat, sound familiar? As I mentioned the acting was great, all of the cast acted as if they been NY City cops at some point in their lives.

Report to the Commissioner is a film about a misfit detective who does not heed the warning of his senior partner and gets himself into one beautiful jackpot as Andy Sipowicz would put it. It's an underrated classic film from the seventies with an interesting cast and a lot of good performances.

Abby Mann wrote the original screenplay of Report to the Commissioner and Mann who is famous for writing Judgement at Nuremberg also is the creator of that classic police series Kojak from the seventies. The film does have a Kojak feel to it. Shooting the thing entirely on location in New York really helps with the believability of the plot.

Michael Moriarty plays a young and very naive detective assigned to what looks to be the Midtown North Precinct in Manhattan. He comes from a police family and he's assigned to partner with Yaphett Kotto who worked with Moriarty's father.

At the same time Susan Blakely is a young, fresh faced, but most experienced detective whose all American good looks fool a lot of perpetrators. She decides to get close to a big time drug dealer played by Tony King to get the goods on him.

To make her cover as a runaway sound feasible, higher up captain Hector Elizondo has Moriarty make some routine inquiries looking for Blakely under her street name of Chicklet. The only problem is that Moriarty takes the assignment way too seriously, earnestly trying to win respect among his peers. It results in tragedy all around.

The cast is really finely tuned in this film. Especially Elizondo who will chill you with his attitude. He turns in a fine performance as a bureaucratic cop real good at department politics, but a real snake as a human being.

In one of his earliest roles is William Devane who has only one scene in the film questioning Moriarty about what's happened. Devane's a hotshot Assistant District Attorney who's practically salivating over a homicide conviction, another scalp for his lodgepole so to speak. You will remember him.

Report to the Commissioner is a nice look at the Seventies in New York and a great police drama. You will agree that Yaphett Kotto gave Moriarty the best advice about knowing the players in a given situation.

You'll overlook this film unless you really are an Aquarian and remember its original theatrical run. Not as highly regarded as Serpico. or Prince of the City, but just as important as one of the breakthrough films that suggested cops could be the bad guys, or, more accurately," ...there are no good guys, there are no bad guys, there's only you and me and we two disagree..". If, by chance you ever see this on the rental shelf, or late night TV, watch it, and you won't be sorry, even if only to see a chronicle of the times before anti-heroes regularly wore badges.

"Homicide" (also starring Yaphet Kotto), "Law and Order" (also, originally, starring Michael Moriarity)...even "Hill Street Blues" owe a debt to this gritty, depressing view of the law enforcement establishment.

In retrospect, watching this film adds significance to the subsequent work of its company.

The 70s were definitely a great time for cinema, giving us gritty NYC thrillers and dramas like "Across 110th Street", "Serpico", "The French Connection", and "Dog Day Afternoon". "Report to the Commissioner", based on the novel by James Mills, can join those ranks, with its matter of fact, semi-documentary approach. Its characters are vivid and convincing, and the performances memorable. The story allows for some tense scenarios, and offers an interesting look into departmental politics within the police department, and how this sort of thing can create its share of victims.

Michael Moriarty stars as Beauregard "Bo" Lockley, a hippie-ish rookie detective on the police force who's overwhelmingly naive. He's partnered with the hard-boiled veteran Richard "Crunch" Blackstone (Yaphet Kotto), and gets a little taste of the street life. His own "doing good" mentality gets him into a lot of trouble when he ends up shooting Patty Butler (Susan Blakely), a beautiful young detective working deep undercover. She'd made the bold decision to move in with a drug pusher, Thomas "Stick" Henderson (Tony King) to get the goods on him, and Lockley had been fed a line of bull about her identity in order to make the whole thing look good. Now the NYPD has to decide what to do with this mess, and how much to tell the commissioner (Stephen Elliott).

For this viewer, the only real debit was Moriarty. Sometimes his eccentricities can benefit a movie (ex: his hilarious performance in "Q: The Winged Serpent"), but here, he's just too whiny and mannered to make his character as sympathetic as he should be. Fortunately, there's lots of heavy hitters here to pick up the slack: Kotto, Blakely, Hector Elizondo, Michael McGuire, Dana Elcar, Bob Balaban, William Devane, Elliott, Vic Tayback. And it's cool to see a young Richard Gere making his film debut as Billy the pimp. Real life NYC detectives Sonny Grosso and Albert Seedman have small roles.

Some of the story is played out in the form of interviews, helping us to get insight into character motivations. There's one damn entertaining, and lengthy, foot chase, which also delivers beefcake for the audience because the studly King is running around wearing little. The entire sequence on the elevator is riveting, especially since we definitely get a sense of how hot it must be in there for Moriarty and King. And Balaban figures in what has to be one of the most original "tailing" sequences seen on film. The location shooting (cinematography by Mario Tosi) is excellent, and Elmer Bernstein supplies a sometimes unusual but generally effective music score.

This one is well worth catching for fans of the actors and lovers of 70s cinema.

Eight out of 10.

A not too likable, idealistic young detective is given an assignment which was unnecessary and therefore led to a tragedy and a shakeup in the police hierarchy. The detective, who was totally useless as a policeman, got all wrapped up emotionally with his assignment and acted completely irrationally when confronted with a dangerous situation. I liked the way the film jumped back and forth in time and depicted life in the department and in the inner city realistically. I didn't care for the way a pad happened to be placed conveniently on the rooftop so the jumpers would have a soft landing. Good drama well worth watching.