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You could have given Flynn any director, setting or costume but even at this point in his career, he could still never escape his self-moulded image. To be fair though, he tries his best as 19th century boxer James J Corbett in this 'biopic' - hurr hurr, as the Warner machine does its ineluctable best to see his story told as they see fit.

Hence, some of the studio's finest worked if not on historical accuracy, the splendid period recreation - characterisations and all - and Raoul Walsh sure loves pugnacity, as evidenced in his later Cagney films. It has to be said that Alexis Smith makes a splendid Olivia de Havilland.

Gould and 'Our Gang' regular Blake play a couple of vice cops who give up on the rest of their lazy and thick-headed department and decide to go about cleaning up the streets single-handedly (come on people, Eastwood, Friedkin and Michael Winner had already done their stuff). Enter every crime/sleaze caricature imaginable, and in 70s gear to boot.

Hyams' first feature is a very straight-faced but contemporarily 'hip' outing, which here and there seems inevitably hilariously dated in its trappings and social mores now, but also doesn't stray too inconsequentially from the tested 'buddy movie' formula. It's got a fine cast and Hyams' action style certainly won't disappoint fans of his later work.

In terms of violence, there is certainly a not-inconsiderable brutality quotient, but I don't know whether I was getting the complete picture in this BBC print, as the BBFC website indicates that 30-odd seconds (of what, not specified) were originally cut for both Cinema and Video.