Harrigan

I don't know who Jessica Lear is, but either she was watching a different film or she has a personal grudge against someone in the crew. A gritty, believable story, well shot, well researched locations, with characters you can really feel for and understand. The authentic 70s feel of the film, right down to the cinematography, is perfect. The dark, brooding undercurrent of the film encapsulates well the desperate and depressing mood the UK, and particularly the north, was suffering in the mid-seventies, without masking the human story behind the main characters. The touches of humour, just took the hard edge off the violence, and strong visual and audible content, to make this a thoroughly enjoyable film, well worth going to see. The storyline and the characters have enough mileage left in them for a sequel or TV series to follow. Good luck to all involved, it is heartening to see a good British film without the mockney mafia involved.

I was impressed with Tompkinson in the lead role and think he carried the film almost single- handedly, although I would also give a special mention to the Acting Chief of police character. It was a shame he didn't have more scenes because he and Tompkinson worked well together.I found the script overly clichéd. Also, it felt like it was missing half an hour's worth of introduction -the allusions of histories between the characters was far too esoteric, to the point that I hardly cared and just had to accept that 'something happened'. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, but the production had more of the feel of a play rather than a film. If I were to dwell on the nine-foot man's second appearance (those of you who have seen it will know what I'm referring to) then I'd probably knock off another star.

Except it isn't. And it never was. Life up north in the 1970s -- and especially, England's Northeast -- was nothing like the monochrome wasteland presented here. Nor was policing like this, either, despite the protestations of those connected with this low-rent low-budget outing.

Absent its premise, therefore, of hard men in hard times in hard places, "Harrigan" is no more than a straight-to-video made-for-TV affair, its simplicities of plot and characterisation conveyed via clichés so stupefyingly banal that one positively yearns for the raw energy of yesteryear's Caine and Hodges in the same part of the world at the same time as this.

"Harrigan" doesn't convince at any level. Stephen Tompkinson has already had a stab at playing a TV policeman -- the leaden "DCI Banks" -- and failed utterly in that role, so why he's here essaying the same kind of grim teeth-gritted stoicism all over again is baffling.

About the only thing that does ring true is the way "Harrigan" -- too close to Don Siegel's "Madigan" for my liking, though it's doubtful anyone involved in this British production will even have heard of that superb US police procedural -- seems to have been shot on a budget typical of a 1970s British TV show.

But that doesn't redeem anything. Unrelentingly drab, dismal, and derivative of a thousand B-Movies that have gone before -- including Westerns as well as copper operas -- "Harrigan" is yet another example, were such needed, of how small-scale British movie making is today incapable of working the crime genre in the way that films like "Violent Playground" and "Never Let Go" did, half a century and more ago.

Still, at least there's some originality in the write-in campaign that seems to be underway where this comment thread is concerned -- a case for investigation by Detective Harrigan, perhaps? Or IMDb itself . .

I have seen some of the negative reviews and I can't believe they watched the same film.

It absolutely caught the atmosphere of 1974 with a gritty style and humour.

Stephen Tomlinson was well cast as the police detective. His scenes were totally believable and sometimes poignantly touching It is set on a run down housing estate with a real eye for detail from the times.

Gangs fighting for their turf back by the corrupt local working class establishment.

It's set in the north of England in a very bleak time and Harrigan has arrived back from Hong Kong where he has been on a two year secondment.

Highly recommended.

The story about sargant 'arrigan in the northeast england in the poor early 70's are a story about a bit crazed but fair policeman returning from the far east,there batteling the hong kong mobsters, and bringing bakc the same procedures and violence used there,to the mill of street crimes in his hometown.

its a tv-movie quality flick, with loads of slang and swearing,the acting are at best average, but mostly stiff and read out of the script,that arent that fascinating. though the revenge is darn sweet in the end, you really feel the toothless force of the police,and how they hide their heads in the muddy pitch of newcastle, never dearing the lawless.

its a one watch in a lifetime flick,no more than that thinks the grumpy old man