Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

DeuceWild_77 Almost forgotten nowadays, "Fort Apache, the Bronx" it's an interesting, but somewhat flawed, cop drama about a Police Precinct in the problematic South Bronx located right in the middle of a "war zone" where taking a life became gratuitous and cheap. Hordes of street gangs, hookers, pimps, drug dealers, heroin addicts, winos & bums roams the over-populated slums ready to explode by racial mixtures and a common war against the authority. When 2 rookie cops are killed at cold blood, the newcomer Commissioner demands results and drastic changes in the police procedures starts to appear, it clashes with the ideals of one of the veterans in the Precinct... Released around the same time with the now legendary TV Show "Hill Street Blues", this Daniel Petrie directed movie, shares the same themes about the day-to-day life in a Police Precinct with several sub-plots related to the main one in a gritty, depressing atmosphere of a decadent South Bronx realistically photographed by the camera of John Alcott. On a high note, even if the movie flows at a slow pace, it catch the viewer much because of Paul Newman's excellent performance as the veteran Irish-American cop, Murphy, himself an outsider in the Precinct, a loner who doesn't like to follow rules by the book, but with a sense of fairness & dignity which makes him a respected individual in the streets. Ken Wahl (the underrated star of Philip Kaufman's "The Wanderers") plays his loyal partner, a daring rookie full of freshness with a will to be promoted soon to start a life with his fiancée. The main plot follows, almost in a documentary style, the lives (in and out of service) of the two protagonists offering a character study of both worlds and their relation to the common values of justice, integrity and the healthy balance between authority and the civilians that lives upon the troubled streets. On a lower note, there's too many subplots (some of them cliché-ridden ) that provides unnecessary loose ends & a certain restriction of a 'made for TV' makes this movie experience not at all satisfactory as a more ambitious (& serious) film on the subject matter (needed a Friedkin, Scorsese, De Palma or Cimino on the helm), but still a watchable piece of work for fans of late 70's / early 80's gritty / raw flicks with attitude & a 56 years old Paul Newman in top form.

dentrex It may have the look of a TV movie, as stated by contemporary reviewers, but here's a movie you can't miss. There are no small parts, it's been said, but small actors... Newman and Asner absolutely sparkle here, and the supporting cast follows suit. For those of you who don't know it, there is a healthy dose of late 70's/early 80's reality of what the South Bronx had become. Burning buildings, burnt out people on the edge of despair and madness, and underpaid/overworked police officers who were almost all on the same edge, trying to do their job. Corruption was rife and as Duggan says, "nobody's getting' rich up here". The film portrays, unforgivingly, this bleak landscape. Pam Grier is just priceless as the hooker, she just staggers through the role with panache. Ticotin is marvelous as the nurse, her scene at the end, stumbling down the street, is absolutely unforgettable and really disturbing. One of Newman's most singular performances, he really let his hair down for this role. Asner's curmudgeonly captain is very entertaining as well as powerful. All in all a great experience.

Bill Slocum Cop work is tough enough without having to work out of one of the toughest precincts in New York City, circa 1981, with crime on the rampage and no end in sight.That's the territory Paul Newman covers as a busted detective turned uniformed patrolman named Murphy in this episodic, occasionally gripping but ultimately unsatisfying film."I've been on this job 18 years," Murphy tells his partner Corelli (Ken Wuhl). "I think every minute of it's written on my face. All the blood, the beatings, the scars...""Fort Apache, The Bronx" isn't just about the scars. There are lighter moments amid the mayhem. Newman gives an interesting, sometimes compelling performance. Now in his mid-50s, he was finally old enough to bust out of his youthful antihero image for the first in a series of jaded 40-something types laid low by the system. This in turn allowed him to enjoy a career renaissance after something of a lull in the 1970s. Murphy's not his best role, but it fits him like a worn leather shoe and points to better parts ahead.Murphy is at the center of a sprawling saga that takes in a double homicide, a street riot, and a woman named Isabella (Rachel Ticotin) who can't break free of the South Bronx even as she seems to Murphy to float above it. She's floating, alright, in a way that stretches credibility in order to keep with the hard-nosed dynamic at work. Ticotin and Newman do play well off each other, enough to give the film some needed light."Fort Apache, The Bronx" has the look and feel right. Shot on location in the South Bronx, director Daniel Petrie and cinematographer John Alcott get maximum production value out of a pretty cheap set. Red light reflects off wet surfaces like splattered blood. Whether you are in Murphy's squad car or a hospital reception room, the oppressive nature of the city is with you in every scene.What you don't have is a strong central story. Writer Heywood Gould presents us instead with a series of vignettes. A transvestite with a Donna Summer fixation wants to jump off a building and needs to be talked down. A purse snatcher in an aviator's cap runs Murphy ragged. A new no-nonsense precinct captain named Connolly (Ed Asner) pushes the wrong buttons trying to catch a cop killer, sending the community into a blue-hating frenzy.None of this is bad material. There are some weak moments, like Murphy clowning around to disarm a knife-wielding maniac. Danny Aiello overplays a one-dimensional role as a bad cop. There are too many hand-rubbing scenes about cops decrying "a world we never made" that feels like wanna-be Joseph Wambaugh.But you also have a film that opens with a slam-bang scene Sam Fuller might have shot, as delivered by Pam Grier in her hot-and-crazy prime. Grier has an interesting story arc that only tangentially connects with Newman's Murphy character but delivers much of the film's bleak message in a gripping and memorable way the rest of the film strains to echo. A lot of New York faces are seen among the cops, crooks, and civilians, like those of Sully Boyar, Paul Gleason, and Cleavant Derricks. Asner is good, too, unlike his fellow real-life liberal Newman playing against his personality as a character who seems to presage Rudy Giuliani and a new New York on the way. If you remember the period like I do, watching this is never a waste of time.Still, the end result is a film that feels like a dry run for better entertainments like the American TV series "Hill Street Blues," which debuted on NBC later the same year of "Fort Apache, The Bronx's" release. Seeing this story play out over a multi-episode arc would have allowed for stretching out promising but under-realized material like the conflict between Murphy and Connolly, two good cops with very different ideas of policing.Instead of taking on the question posed by Connolly's approach, of fighting for the rights of decent people to live in a law-abiding community even if it means busting a few heads, the film settles for a final chase scene and some soft jazz undercut by a memorable image of a rolled-up rug in a junkyard. It's another scene to remember in a movie that has a few of them, even if the overall result feels too rolled up itself.

Killakai I enjoyed it, looking at the Bronx that i remember as a kid. But the characters are all 1 dimensional. The criminals are stupid as hell, Pam Grier is a serial killer for absolutely no reason at all. The heroin dealers are bumbling idiots.There are 2 characters with any depth at all, Newman and his partner. They are developed characters and you root for them, but the story leads you no where.Why is Pam Grier killing cops and everyone else? Just because shes high? The dope dealers take the gun that she used to kill the cops but we never see the cops figure that out.What is the point of the movie? We hear about police corruption but never see it? Why is there so much crime? How can the problem realistically be tackled?I don't know, the movie just took me on a journey to nowhere. Murphy's girl is a dope fiend, but why? Where is her family? How do they react? The movie needed more than it gave me. but i was good enough for me to watch it to the end.