Director: Howard W. Koch
Cast: Robert Duvall, Verna Bloom, Henry Darrow, Eddie Egan, Felipe Luciano,
Plot: When his partner is killed, tough Irish detective Eddie Ryan vows to avenge the death, whatever the cost. As he begins unraveling clues, his behavior becomes so outrageous that he's obliged to turn in his badge, but the experience only emboldens him. Ryan eventually learns that his partner was caught up in a Puerto Rican gun-running scheme masterminded by a crook named Sweet Willie, who wants to foment revolutionary war.
Back to the ’70s
Revisiting movies from the early 1970s, I recently watched Howard W. Koch’s rather ugly cop feature Badge 373 (1973), with Robert Duvall as a rule-breaking, racist misogynist NYC detective; Willard (1971), Daniel Mann’s adaptation of […]