I'm usually a big fan of realistic, shot-on-the-streets of New York cop movies, but not this one.Plot, if you want to call it that, has cops looking for a bad guy, who's wanted for murder. Whoopie. Not a single character has any depth, storyline is pathetic, and Henry Fonda is about as authentic as a NYPD Commissioner as Pee Wee Herman would be.Can't think of a single memorable line, nor a single surprise during entire movie. Matter of fact, I just saw it yesterday, and forgot the ending already.I swear, I've seen much, much better cop flicks on those old televised "Movie of the Week" shows that used to be all the rage.Close, no, make that NOT EVEN CLOSE, to being a decent movie.

The end of an era. Cops in suits with narrow ties and fedoras, worn inside and out, day and night. Lincoln sedans with rear suicide doors. Women in bright colours, hats, and fully made up stay at home wives. The bad guys and near criminals in mauves and plush velour at the edge of the beatnik fringe. Dial telephones, typewriters, carbon paper, no computers, cops using phone booths and carrying dimes, cigarettes and booze everywhere, adultery, a near drunken sexual assault, all 60's stuff at the end of an era. Widmark is too old to have both a hot wife and an ongoing pleutonic relationship with a nightclub singer. He is also a nice guy one minute and physically threatening an old lady the next or kicking down a door without a warrant. He can't carry off the bad cop and rule breaker role. There is a subplot with police corruption and the straight laced commissioner learns too bend a little with advice from his married girlfriend. There is a second subplot with a potential racial police incident with a black suspect. The finale is pre-SWAT teams with the two detectives breaking through a door armed with two handguns each in a shootout reminiscent of a B western. Forget the plot, with its many flaws, and focus on the New York and the sixties look and feel

"Madigan" is a copy thriller from the same director who gave us "Dirty Harry" - Don Siegel. The plot is solid and fairly streamlined. Richard Widmark is great in the title character as the cop who is given 72 hours to find a known killer who is loose on the streets of New York. Henry Fonda, James Whitmore, Stella Stevens and Harry Guardino provide excellent support. There are some scenes that were filmed on the studio's backlot which dilutes any kind of gritty edge this film strives for. However, there is a good deal of location photography around New York. The pace is good but perhaps there should have been a bit more action. The climax certainly compensates for this, even if the ending is unnecessarily downbeat. This isn't quite as good as "The Detective" or "The Boston Strangler" but "Madigan" is still very watchable.

I believe this is a great film, one of Don Siegle's best. Some reviewers did not appreciate the two plots. They thought the Henry Fonda story line was soapy. Actually the contrast between the two plots was the central theme of the movie. The first shot is of the old New York Central train (now Metro North) emerging from the underground to the elevated tracks. It sets the tone. You're still on Park Avenue but you're leaving the wealthy Upper East Side and entering East Harlem which in those days was a tough Italian American neighborhood (my old neighborhood) now known as Spanish Harlem. Fonda, once a street cop is now Police Commissioner his world is among the elites of the City. Widmark and Harry Guardino are two hard nosed detectives who were embarrassed by a psycho who took their guns and then killed another officer. Now they have to track him down. The difference between the two worlds and the different types of decisions that have to be made is what the film is about. The cast is excellent Fonda, scrupulously by the book, Widmark who throws the book away to do what's required of him James Whitmore. the more human Chief of Department, Guardino and the luminous Inger Stevens, the brilliantly filmed final gunfight all make for an unforgettable film.