Os Impiedosos

This is a very "late '60s" detective drama, and if you're in the mood, it will hit the spot.

What struck me, and it has not been picked up by other posters, is the very visible difference between the majority of the scenes, shot on authentic NYC locations, and a few scenes straight from the Universal backlot, on urbanistically nonsensical streets with no gutters.

The studio shot scenes (and the school-of-Lalo-Shifrin score) increase the impression that you are watching a first class TV movie. It all makes you hungry for a dinner in a foil tray.

Definitely entertaining, in a period way.

A fine, harshly realistic Don Siegel film from the late 60's with Richard Widmark superb as Madigan. Steve Ihnat (from THE CHASE) is also a perfect twisted and aggressive villain with able support from Harry Guardino. The lovely Inger Stevens is touching in one of her last roles before her untimely demise.

A 7 out of 10. Best performance = Steve Ihnat (who died too young). Don Siegel made a lot of good films and this is near the top of the list. One of the pro-cop films before Dirty Harry blasted it open. Once again, Inger Stevens will break your heart near the end of this and she never looked more beautiful in her all too short career. Well worth anyone's time.

Detective Daniel Madigan (the excellent Richard Widmark) is very efficient and experienced, but also has no ethics. His partner, Detective Rocco Bonaro (Harry Guardino), and him go to a hotel room for the simple arrest of the small-time bandit Barney Benesch (Steve Ihnat). Madigan is reckless and in a lack of attention on Benesch, he reacts, takes the guns of the detectives and escapes. When back to the precinct, they receive the information that Benesch is a killer. Commissioner Anthony X.Russel (Henry Fonda), a very rigid and moralist man, gives a schedule of three days maximum for the detectives to arrest Benesch. Yesterday it was the first time that I watched this excellent police-drama movie. In the present days, this movie is politically incorrect: Madigan has no ethics, most of the characters have affair with lovers, smoking is `in', the interrogation is rough without human rights, and this is one of the greatest points of this film, since it is very real. Further, Don Siegel does not need car chases, explosions and other special effects to hook the attention of the viewer. The direction, screenplay and performance of the actors and actresses are more than enough to satisfy the viewer. The characters are very well developed and the scenes are very realistic. Again, an excellent police-drama movie recommended for those who like police story. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): ` Os Impiedosos' (`The Unmerciful')

Madigan is memorable for its final, climactic gunfight. This is the closest the cinematic art will ever come to reality unless someone actually captures a real life up-close-and-nasty gunfight on film. Widmark and Guardino vs. Steve Ihnat in about 4 seconds of absolute mayhem, with tragic results.

By the way, I saw this film in an Army hospital in 1969, while recovering from being wounded in Vietnam. It was projected on a bedsheet hung in the middle of a ward. The image showed through clearly, so I (and half the audience) watched it from the back side of the sheet; all lefts and rights were reversed!

Directed by Don Siegel who had a foot firmly planted in classic Hollywood and who was also a trailblazer in modernizing American action films, "Madigan" serves the perfect bridge between the two. Co-written by Abraham Polonsky, who'd previously been on the Hollywood Blacklist for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, the film follows two different NYPD police officers. One is Madigan, a tough no-nonsense detective played by Richard Widmark trying to catch a killer, and the other is the straight-arrow police commissioner, Henry Fonda, who's balancing justice, politics, and an extra-marital affair. The film was based on a book titled "The Commissioner" and Fonda's character was the original focus of the story, but the producers instead changed the focus to Widmark's Madigan character, so the film unfortunately ends up a an odd combination of two different stories. Both Fonda and Widmark's stories involve them having to balance their work-life and home-life, but neither of those story elements seemed all that interesting. The most interesting part of the story concerned Widmark and his partner, Harry Guardino, on the trail of criminal Steve Ihnat. Watching Widmark and Guardino push the boundaries of acceptable law enforcement in their investigation makes this film an interesting bridge to director Don Siegel's controversial and highly influential vigilante cop film "Dirty Harry" he'd make a few years later. Siegel also makes great use of NYC locations that give ether film added grit and realism, much like we'd later see in William Friedkin's "The French Connection" and Siegel's use of San Francisco in "Dirty Harry." Siegel also skillfully demonstrates his own directional action sequences chops with a memorable showdown in the film's finale, which features with three characters in tight quarters, all with John Woo-style double-fisted pistols in each hand. Overall, "Madigan" features an old style police detective story (with a nice plot nod to Kurosawa's "Stray Dog") that abandons the stylistic German Expressionist roots of American film noir and instead takes the genre into new more realistic and gritty of territory, even if those stronger elements get somewhat undone by dull and unoriginal subplots involving the marital lives of Madigan and the commissioner.