2 supercolt a Brooklyn

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.

Director Gordon Parks' excellent buddy-cop corruption comedy, with a cast of great genre and character actors - this seems most often compared to Serpico, Dirty Harry and The French Connection from what little I could find on it. But really, it bears more resemblance to The New Centurions and earlier blaxploitation classics in terms of comic tone, racial politics and groovy yet tough protagonists. Curiously, there is a brief but enjoyable gunfight and chase through a building under demolition, making me involuntarily compare scenes and buddy mechanics with Starrett's The Gravy Train of the same year.

Funny that it concerns a couple of unconventional cops nicknamed Batman and Robin, given that the screenwriter worked on the '60s series. Also, the presence of bulldog-eyed genre fave Pat Hingle, who would go on to repeatedly play Commissioner Gordon.

Frazier has great inter-racial sexual tension with the also funny Leibman, and her scream session suggests that she could have had a terrific career in horror. Maybe now that this is getting screened at the New Bev in L.A. by Edgar Wright, one hopes that we could eventually see it surface from MGM for an HD broadcast.

Gordon Parks, the prolific black Life magazine photographer, made a true ticking-timebomb of a movie here - one that does not mess around! Based upon the true story of two NYC cops - later dubbed Batman and Robin - who singlehandedly employed radical tactics to clean up their precinct neighborhood of drugs, this is a cop-buddy movie before that term became a repetitive formula. Lightning paced, there is not one unimportant throwaway scene here.

Man, early '70s NYC must have been a terrible place to be a police officer, from the looks of movies like this and "Serpico." These two cops start out as safety-division rookies, busting dealers in plainclothes in their spare time. But instead of receiving applause from the city police department, they receive nothing but resistance and antagonism from their peers. They have to singlehandedly navigate a minefield of police and legal corruption, boneheaded assignments meant to keep them from their work on the streets, ruthless drug kingpins, and a nasty ghetto neighborhood.

Both David Selby and Ron Leibman are fantastic in the leads; part of the entertainment is watching Leibman's eyes darting around crazily in every scene in what is a flawless comic performance, and Selby's acting is low-key and wry. These two make all the comedy aspects of the story work - displaying a palpable frustration mixed with gutsy determination. Director Parks, who was already known for his coverage of controversial subjects in his photography, does not shy away from the grittiness of the story. Rather, the movie is uncompromising in portrayal of the toughness of the world of police and streets criminals that these two men inhabit. Adding to this realism is the fact that the real Hantz and Greenberg acted as technical advisors for the film, and even appear in surreal cameo roles as two fellow officers who ridicule the protagonists. It is a real tribute to the effectiveness of Parks' direction that he manages to perfectly balance this depressing mileu with bright comedy.

This film has slipped through the cracks of film history. It is by far much better than some other New York films of the same era such as: "The French Connection" or "The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3". There is a gritty reality to this film which also manages to effectively use humor to further the plot line. It's engaging from start to finish and hasn't tarnished with age as is the case with the above two examples.

Ron Liebman turns in a bravura performance as "Batman" and it's a shame his career didn't take off as a result of this project.

Gordon Parks directs and, coming as it does after "Shaft", it at first appears to be a strange choice. Yet it is the flip side of that earlier effort and approached with just as much in your face machismo.

Unfortunately this film has not been made available on either DVD or VHS in the United States. United Artists really has a gem on their hands and it's a shame they're not doing anything with it.