On D List of Movie Reviews
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The Detective (1968)
Rate:
4
Viewed:
5/24
5/24:
Bringing back some of the same people on the production team from Tony Rome, I thought
The Detective would be better, but it turns out not to be the case.
From the outset, the editing is what hurt the film the most. Then, I'm taken from one story to another and to another. What's
this...an anthology of a policeman's life? That's not what I signed up for. I wanted to see Frank Sinatra working on a
murder case in the neo-noir sense. Instead, I'm given Lee Remick's infamous long stares after hearing her character is a
no-good cheating bitch. Hey, thanks, but no thanks. Here's a fun fact: the actress was twenty years Frank Sinatra's junior.
After the initial case is quickly solved, I knew right away the detective didn't get his man. Of course, a predictable
twist comes later, and it's exactly what I thought only that I didn't understand why my time was wasted on the wife for
so long. Ditto for the useless flashbacks which are sometimes comical when Frank Sinatra was meant to be way younger
in some of them.
At first, Robert Duvall and Al Freeman, Jr., do their own thing, and then, they disappear for good in the long run. Next,
Jacqueline Bisset shows up as Norma MacIver, and I thought Frank Sinatra was in the mood for a swap, but
the filmmakers were making a connection between her and the initial case in an attempt to be clever. But the fact is that
they lost me as a member of the audience when I wanted to finish the movie already while looking at the timer too
many times. Oh, please for the gay stuff...it looks ridiculous by now.
Detective Segeant Joe Leland has a moral compass? Yeah, sure. He broke into the psychiatrist's office without a search
warrant and then violated the doctor-patient privilege by listening to one of his tapes. Eventually, Leland quits because the
slime of New York City has gotten to be too much for him to take given that I'm pretty sure he had been aware of it for
decades. Luckily, Serpico came along and thus did it so much better.
By the way, Roderick Thorp authored the novel. Years later, he saw the film
The Towering Inferno and got inspired to write a sequel to The Detective
called Nothing Lasts Forever which would be retitled for the film version. Today, we know it better as
Die Hard with Joe Leland's name changed to John McClaine. Believe it or not,
Frank Sinatra, aged 73 at the time, was first offered the role but turned it down which went to Bruce Willis who actually
made his screen debut in one of Frank Sinatra's pictures: The First Deadly Sin.
All in all, if you want a good old-fashioned neo-noir picture with Frank Sinatra in a leading role, go with
Tony Rome, not The Detective.