directed by Barry Shear
Lieutenant Pope (Kotto) and Captain Matelli (Quinn) clash as they search for three Black men who stole from the mob and gunned down several Black and Italian-American mobsters. The mob has a team of men, led by Nick D'Salvio (Francisosa), looking for the thieves.
Thoughts
I'm undecided as to whether to classify this as a heist movie. It certainly has elements in common with heist films. The movie opens with the robbery. The thieves have a plan but it doesn't include murder. One of them, Jim Harris (Benjamin), got nervous while they were robbing the mob and gunned down the men they were robbing. The robbers are an integral part of the film but the movie seems to be more about relationships and racial tension than about the robbery or the aftermath of the robbery.
There are a couple chase scenes that I really liked in the in the second half of the movie. Both scenes involve races through buildings. Logart, one of the robbers, is pursued by the mob in the first scene which winds up in a building that is still under construction. Harris is hounded by first the mob and then the police in the second chase scene. That one is set in an abandoned tenement building.
The movie is fairly violent. D'Salvio seems nervous at first but as the movie progresses he seems to take more joy in pursuing the robbers. He does not mince words and uses the n-word quite frequently.
The actors playing Harris' partners in crime both went on to careers on TV shows in the 1970s. Ed Bernard appeared in every episode of Police Woman (1974-1978) and in 33 of the 39 episodes across the first two seasons of the White Shadow (1978-1980). Antonio Fargas played Huggy Bear on Starsky and Hutch (1975-1979). He was in every episode of that show. Paul Benjamin is most familiar to me from his role in Do the Right Thing (1989).
Burt Young, who is probably best known for playing Paulie, Rocky's brother-in-law in the Rocky films, has a small part in this movie as one of the mobsters who gets gunned down during the robbery. Tim O'Connor, whom I know best for his role as Dr. Huer on Buck Rogers in the 25th century, also shows up in this movie.
I'm not sure this is a can't miss movie but I enjoyed watching it.
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