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The follow-up is Aldrich's The Choirboys, unless it's Bay's Bad Boys II. San Francisco cops in their natural element, rummaging through refuse and roughing up bystanders, James Caan and Alan Arkin in a shambolic vaudeville dyad. "We're not meat packers, we're law-enforcement officers," the D.A. (Alex Rocco) is blunter in his appraisal: "You're not fit to guard the fish at the aquarium." They climb a high-rise and threaten to push a contact off a construction crane, then cap a stakeout at the bowling alley by unloading their guns on the suspect in the lavatory stall. At home, one grills the missus (Valerie Harper) about imagined infidelities while the other offers his girlfriend (Linda Marsh) an analysis of Lawrence of Arabia. ("About a guy who couldn't make up his mind whether to ball a dried-up water hole or a camel or even a clean Arab boy...") Richard Rush multiplies Friedkin's The French Connection by Altman's California Split and gets New Hollywood's macho-neurotic id in its purest form, one flurry of giddy vileness after another. The case involving a criminal bigwig (Jack Kruschen) is a springboard for bravura sprees of vehicular gags. One slapstick dilation of the Bullitt chase squeezes its demolition derby into a tunnel before plowing through a marching band in the park and ending with an off-ramp dive into a third-story apartment. Rush goes on to outdo this with an extended pursuit that begins with a melee in a dentist's office, continues with a shootout between glass elevators, careens on a motorcycle through an art gallery and climaxes with the foe covered in sauce in a restaurant kitchen. "Call an ambulance!" "What for? Get a large bun and a doggie bag, we'll take him home with us." The showdown with the transvestite assassin (Christopher Morley) takes after Edwards' Gunn, the concluding high-angled view of the eternal squabble goes into Bertolucci's Novecento. With Loretta Swit, Mike Kellin, Paul Koslo, John Garwood, Edward Donno, and Monty Stickles.
--- Fernando F. Croce |