Where Joseph Wambaugh, the policemen's friend and mouthpiece, wants faithfully to represent his former partners on the force, Robert Aldrich wants to employ those same characters metaphorically to represent something bigger. Which is, the average slob. He uses the policemen's daily debasement in the L.A. nightworld to strip them of any delusions of grandeur (there's never allowed a melodramatic confrontation between law breakers and enforcers, as though courage, cunning, and a sense of duty might be construed as forms of elitism), and he equates their masculine camaraderie with an eternal high-school kid's fondness for beer parties, locker-room horseplay, practical jokes, and show-off insolence. He undoubtedly doesn't expect the audience to condone the scurrilous behavior of his characters, but simply to acknowledge the truth that boys will be boys (or rather, that men will be boys). It's a genuinely raunchy movie. All of the overt slobbism, though, is held in its proper place -- cleanly within the contours of character and milieu. Aldrich's treatment of the material, on the other hand, is always brisk and bullish and at times, in its rush, almost uncomprehending. With Charles Durning, Perry King, Don Stroud, and Burt Young. (1977) — Duncan Shepherd
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