The metaphor of the title — the police station as a lonely sanctuary in hostile territory — is at least as evocative as any of Joseph Wambaugh's Blue Knight-New Centurion-Choirboy metaphors for the modern policeman. A more appreciative eye for the feathered Indian decorations on the station-house walls and for the throng of jittery citizens who camp outside for a sense of security would not only have sharpened the metaphor, but would have made unnecessary the hour's worth of police-routine anecdotes by which this movie slowly and clumsily establishes its sense of danger. The narrative sense, on the whole, is more suspect than the visual. It isn't until after the first hour, starting with the indiscriminate roundup of local malefactors in an effort to flush out a cop killer, that the movie finally picks up some narrative momentum, and even then not because of the rather old-hat crisis of conscience that develops, but because of the increased frequency of good action scenes. Paul Newman, Ken Wahl, Edward Asner; directed by Daniel Petrie. (1981) — Duncan Shepherd
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