Badge 373


Badge 373 is a 1973 American neo noir crime thriller film inspired, as was The [French Connection |The French Connection], by the life and career of police officer Eddie Egan, here called "Eddie Ryan". The film, which has a screenplay by journalist Pete Hamill, was produced and directed by Howard W. Koch, and stars Robert Duvall as Ryan, with Verna Bloom, Henry Darrow and Eddie Egan himself as a police lieutenant.
The film was not successful, either at the U.S. box office or with the critics but was an overseas Box Office Success especially in Italy, France, Spain,West Germany and Australia.

Plot

Eddie Ryan, a tough, no-nonsense, abrasive and racist Irish NYPD cop, has to turn in his badge after scuffling with a Puerto Rican suspect who then falls to his death from a rooftop, but that doesn't stop him from heading out on a one-man crusade to find out who killed his partner of three years, Gigi Caputo, all the while neglecting his new live-in girlfriend, Maureen. Ryan's search leads him to Puerto Rican drug kingpin Sweet Willie, and a shipment of guns for Puerto Rican independentistas.

Cast

Cast notes:
Badge 373 was shot on location on the streets of New York City. At one point, in what film writer Jeff Stafford calls a deliberate attempt to recall the car-chase scene from The French Connection, which was also based on the exploits of Eddie Egan, Robert Duvall as police detective Eddie Ryan attempts to chase down suspects in their car by hijacking a city bus, the 14th Street crosstown. The chase does not follow actual Manhattan geography, and passes locations including the West 125th viaduct and a meatpacking plant, and a branch of the record store King Karol at 460 West 42nd Street. Locations for other scenes include the Manhattan Bridge, with the World Trade Center's Twin Towers in the background, and the FDR Drive, with the United Nations headquarters visible.
On August 10, 1973, Paramount Pictures rejected a demand by the Puerto Rican Action Coalition to withdraw the film for what the coalition called the movie's racism.

Crew

Controversy

Puerto Ricans picketed the film claiming it was discriminatory against that group.

Critical response

The critical reaction to Badge 373 was generally negative. In The New York Times, Roger Greenspun pointed out the biases of the film: "All of the evil is perpetrated by Puerto Ricans, either innocent but violent revolutionaries who run around shouting 'Puerto Rico Libre!' or the uninnocent but equally violent nonrevolutionaries who manipulate them. Against such forces, Eddie the hard-nosed cop has only the instincts of his personal bigotry to guide him. And invariably the instincts of his personal bigotry turn out to be right.... nless you care to hate Puerto Ricans I don't see how the movie can have anything for you". Variety called it "a ploddingly paced police meller with racist and fascist undertones... Producer Howard W. Koch, doubling as director, demonstrates no visual style or energy and even allows the several obligatory chase sequences to dribble into tedium."
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times was positive, giving the film three stars out of four and calling it "a tough movie with some interesting things to say about cops-and-robbers morality." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film half of one star out of four, writing that it played "like a Mad magazine parody" of The French Connection, "only the filmmakers aren't kidding." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "In short, Hamill has turned out a hack script. The result is a potboiler movie that, if anything, patronizes rather than illuminates its working-class hero despite the authenticity with which Duvall, always a fine actor, invests him." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called it "a dull, shoddy spinoff" of The French Connection, adding that "Duvall's cop is a little cruder than Hackman's, and he also seems less capable. The lack of any originality in the characterization is a little embarrassing: 'Badge 373' seems to think it's different because Duvall insults Puerto Ricans, whereas Hackman insulted Negroes." John Gillett of The Monthly Film Bulletin compared Badge 373 unfavorably to Dirty Harry in that "unlike Siegel, Koch fails to put his hero's activities in any kind of perspective; and even though the violence is kept in check, its ambiguities leave a somewhat repellent taste. All in all, another deeply divided and scarcely reassuring addition to the movies' composite portrait of the American police force."