Based on the true story of officer Eddie Egan,, who also has a small part in this movie,, I found it to be urban gritty, and to the point,, after he get's suspended from the force for causing the death of a bad guy,, he takes up bartending part time.. he later find out that his partner was viciously gunned down,, now he must take action 'Dirty Harry" style,, he sets out on a mission with only one thing in mind,, get the man or men that killed his partner,, the bad guys are led by a character named "Sweet William" , and now the battle is on good vs. evil,, sure this isn't gonna win any awards by no stretch of the imagination and certainly pales compared to the French Connection,, but this is a movie worthwhile of you're time.

I really tried to like this movie. In fact, I was excited to get it for a number of reasons: Robert Duvall, an Eddie Egan vehicle, and it being an early 1970's cop movie filmed in New York City. Many of the things I like. But I was sorely disappointed. I just don't follow the attraction to this film. In the wake of such Seventies superstar films like 'Dirty Harry', 'The French Connection', and 'Shaft' among others ('The Seven-Ups' is a great example of a lesser known film but equally as exciting), 'Badge 373' is a slow-moving, poorly acted, long, uninspiring, and less than memorable movie which surprisingly detours half-way through. Duvall is at best fair and Egan is painful in watching him deliver his robotic lines. Direction by Howard Koch is unimaginative and dark in many areas. A fairly exciting chase sequence involving a NYC transit bus along with a decent performance by Verna Bloom as Duvall's long suffering girlfriend, some noticeable non-PC slurs and a decent aerial view of lower Manhattan gives this movie its only credibility.

My views on films are enigmatic sometimes; this is one of those times..!I tend to like 2 completely mutually exclusive types of film; really good enjoyable movies & really bad enjoyable movies. Some can be a bit of both and this is the category I present for "Badge 373". A group of my friends & I enjoy nothing more than film nights which include a wide variety of good and bad films; all ultimately just fodder for us to critique, but features like this one really help break up the monotony of current Hollywood sensibilities and political correctness.I won't bother to re-iterate what has already been posted regarding "plot" etc, but I will add comments to justify why I think it deserves to be included at the very top of the "So bad it's good" selection.To start Robert Duvall...He has two characters in his repertoire "Angry man" (Network,Badge373,etc) & "The thinker" (The Apostle,THX1138). Thankfully he plays his angry man who practically shouts all the time in this..and shout he does; obscenities and racist remarks a given (sexist,racist,homophobic{before most knew the meaning of the word} and practically ever other you can imagine). The dialogue is simply ridiculous and even Duvall must have had many quiet chuckles to himself "memorising" such unforgettable lines as "I hope you're circumcised as survival in prison is measured in terms of inches"! Yep you guessed it; this film was produced pre-certification...Need I say more regarding the dialogue? It really has to be heard to be believed..! I would certainly agree with what other critics have said here..that it is a "Cop-film" born of the times it was made; with the copper portrayed as a hard-as-nails, uncompromising, morally challenged, thug: Who is as bad as the criminals he is chasing down. As has been said; It does not do the fine job that French Connection did, but then can you really compare the two directors (William Friedkin vs Howard Koch)?Do yourself a favour and get hold of a copy if you can; it took me close to 7 years to track down a copy after seeing the trailer on a bootleg VHS of "Cheech & Chong's - Up in smoke". I will now list reasons for your time & effort to source this feature: 1.THE most ludicrous dialogue ever committed to film 2.Hopeless action/fight scenes that don't even look rehearsed(Comic genius) 3.The cop who's story is being filmed acts in a supporting role 4.No films like this will ever be made again(Un-PC) 5.Duvall has THE worst undercover costume ever(Wig & tashe) 6.The main villain is called "Sweet William" 7.It has possibly the most ridiculous chase scene ever with a bus-load of innocent civilians dragged into one mans vendetta & after all the effort to chase him, in order to kill him, they just thump him in the gut and leave him alone!...I could go on forever..."the learning to shoot with his left hand" scenes are pure gold, as is the "Until they kill me" line delivered with possibly the worst Brooklyn/Irish hybrid accent you ever heard.All that's left for me to do is write up the tag line: "A gun in his sock, an iron bar in his belt & no badge!" 5 Star atrocious goodness. Watch this after going down the pub for a few beers & you will laugh yourself silly...I know we did!

Robert Duvall is one of my favorite people to watch on screen. He doesn't have a tremendously deep bag of tricks, but he's serious and earnest and I hope he keeps working for a long, long time. I say this partly because he's good and he has some more penance to do to make up for Badge 373, a perfect zero of a cops and robbers flick.What was Duvall thinking when he made this clichéd glob of TVish trash? He was coming off the glory of The Godfather. Did he just sign anything he could get his hands on thinking that with his stellar performance as Tom Hagen, people would flock to see him in anything? There's absolutely nothing likable about this movie. I enjoyed the big, muscular cars of the early 70's, but that's not enough to keep one's attention span from snapping pretty darn quickly. The cinematography was lifeless, the color was garish, the pacing and plotting and canned music were all dull, and there wasn't a single person, plot device, or line of dialogue that was the slightest bit interesting.I didn't care about Duvall's Eddie Ryan. The only character who even showed up on my radar was Verna Bloom, Ryan's girlfriend. She's a big, painted zoftig woman who looks utterly different in High Plains Drifter and Animal House. I liked her, but all she can do is squeal her Brooklyn accent, get hurt by Eddie, and die dramatically.The rest of the movie is just so much clichéd nonsense with one scene stacked on top another, giving Duvall a chance to spurt racial epithets, threaten revenge for his murdered partner (Oh, you didn't see it coming that Ryan's partner gets killed early on? Duh!), get thumped in a ludicrous bus/Puerto Rican gangster chase scene, practice to shoot with his left hand, drive some really cool Dodges and Plymouths, and have the worst case of thought bubble flashbacks to remind him and us why he's just going to have to blast the head bad guy when he corners him on some sort of crane.Howard Koch did some really good work in his career; here he directs an astonishingly bad mixture of R-rated cop movie and TV drama. The whole thing just looks so cheap and silly and you have to wonder just how many good movies Duvall will still need to make to cleanse his soul of the sin of Badge 373.