Naked City: Justice with a Bullet

This Showtime cable film features a talented cast and weaves together several storylines involving the darker side of New York... from the naive and innocent tourists' nightmarish adventure to a pair of undercover cops on the streets... to an old friend's betrayal, it has it all.

Well worth a look, as is its sequel.

The essence of this film falls on judgments by police officers who, fortunately ethical and moral men, act on situations within situations in a city with a super-abundance of violence and killing. Good compound interacting story lines and above-average characterizations.

As bad as they get. This film commits the fatal error of making the viewer not care what happens to characters. The two women in this flick are so stupid that you begin to root for the bad guys so this thing would end.

This film is one of the few that was so bad that I had to turn to another channel.

Put in highbrow language, this film lacks verisimilitude. People, not even people from Ohio, simply do not act like this. Well, maybe the writers do.

There is not enough beer in the world to make this film bearable.

F903

Before going into reviewing this I have to warn you readers that I saw it five months after the sequel. Why, you might ask? Well, back on December I still hadn't found a way for having access on YouTube for movies not for the squeamish and the sequel hadn't restrictions so I watched that first but on May I finally got the way for seeing on YouTube. But at least is not that bad as some of the few that reviewed it say,

Sergeant Daniel Muldoon (Scott Glenn) and Officer James Halloran (Courtney Vance) are two police officers that work driving with a taxi across the streets of New York and without some humour they resolve the most disparate crimes. This time they have to protect Sarah Tubbs and Merri Coffman (the latter played by Robin Tunney), two young girls that had their luggage and money stolen and have to be protected by a dangerous circle led by Chaz Villanueva (Giancarlo Esposito, and believe it or not the following day I saw him in theater in ABIGAIL) involving adult movies and drugs under a shadow of saintness. After a run-in with two hitmen sent by Chaz and a meeting with kingpin Deluca (Eli Wallach) for agreement, Muldoon and Halloran will manage to save the girls.

As I was watching I assumed that having seen the sequel first, this is by force inferior even if I would have seen this first. While the sequel was edgy and with some funny moments, this was more slow-paced and with more sleazy characters. But despite these deficencies, the twist at the end was shocking and unexpected where Chaz was found out to be the responsible of the stolen luggage and money.

Overall, if you can manage to watch them in order unlike me, I wonder if you'll find yourselves in my same position that I prefer the sequel. But this, while inferior, it hasn't its moments.

I don't usually like TV movies, I reckon that if the thing was any good it would make it to Hollywood. This one though is better than average, pretty high production values, a few interesting story twists and some nice shots of NYC (along with Toronto) hold the interest.