Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

timmy_501 Based on a true story, Gordon Parks' 1974 film Super Cops is a loose collection of episodes about a couple of honest and determined rookie cops that gradually changes tone. The opening is satirical as titular pair Greenberg and Hantz encounter a police-training program notably for its absurdity. The opening scene is emblematic of the issues the film handles as the head trainer insists that the recruits should form two lines, with the front line composed of the tall men and the back line composed of the shorter men. When told quite logically that this is opposite of the way such things are usually conducted, the head trainer responds that this is just the way things have always been done in this course. The police departments consistently asserts its backwards priorities throughout training, as when a senior officer insists that the rookies mind their post directing traffic while an unopposed gunman takes shots at civilians from a high window a couple of blocks away. This section, which points out the absurdity of a bureaucracy that keeps things from being done instead of aiding them as it should, gets the film off to a particularly good start as it makes its point economically and convincingly while simultaneously displaying a sharp biting wit and establishing the characters and their goals. Greenberg and Hantz quickly make a name for themselves as they take on real police work when they are off duty, arresting drug dealers and other small time crooks who flaunt their crimes before an undefended public. Here again, the police department comes off as the main antagonist as the veterans view these rookies with suspicion and assume their hard work is part of a grift. As the film progresses, the men encounter laziness, corruption, and stupidity at every level of the department and are generally punished for their hard work until they become famous for some of their wilder antics. One such antic has one partner commandeering a city bus and another jumping off a fire escape to get the drop on some out of town hired killers. The humor in such scenes is a bit on the zany side, though not overbearingly so; rather, this complements the more sophisticated jabs at bureaucracy surprisingly well. After the mostly comedic first part, Greenberg and Hantz end up stationed at an undesirable precinct in a particularly dangerous neighborhood and the tone gradually becomes more serious, especially when they work against some well-connected drug distributors who use the department's flaws to their own advantage. Director Parks conveys a sense of tenseness in certain scenes quite well, an especially impressive feat given the comedic sections preceding them. In fact, Parks work is impressive overall, as all aspects of the film are more than competent, though there aren't many moments that really stick out on a technical level. This is an engaging, well-made police film that highlights some of the problems of bureaucracy in general and police bureaucracy particularly with a combination of satirical wit, zany humor, and a few scenes that are a bit more serious.

qormi This "buddy cop" film is all about Ron Leibman constantly flashing his buck toothed grin while David Selby looks on.That's it.The criminals, dope pushers,prostitutes - all are extremely unauthentic. Leibman is strangely attracted to a black prostitute who works out of a cockroach infested, paint chip peeling, stinky skid row room. She is perfectly coiffed and speaks like she went to Harvard. The drug pushers and pimps seem like reasonable people and will bend over backwards as "grin" and "bear it" get over on them. Totally unconvincing as they go against the grain and all the superior officers are portrayed as corrupt imbeciles. The claustrophobic New York City environs seem authentic enough; everything else is way off base.

Trent Reid Director Gordon Parks' excellent buddy-cop corruption comedy, with a cast of great genre and character actors - this seems most often compared to Serpico, Dirty Harry and The French Connection from what little I could find on it. But really, it bears more resemblance to The New Centurions and earlier blaxploitation classics in terms of comic tone, racial politics and groovy yet tough protagonists. Curiously, there is a brief but enjoyable gunfight and chase through a building under demolition, making me involuntarily compare scenes and buddy mechanics with Starrett's The Gravy Train of the same year.Funny that it concerns a couple of unconventional cops nicknamed Batman and Robin, given that the screenwriter worked on the '60s series. Also, the presence of bulldog-eyed genre fave Pat Hingle, who would go on to repeatedly play Commissioner Gordon.Frazier has great inter-racial sexual tension with the also funny Leibman, and her scream session suggests that she could have had a terrific career in horror. Maybe now that this is getting screened at the New Bev in L.A. by Edgar Wright, one hopes that we could eventually see it surface from MGM for an HD broadcast.

Tiny-13 This film has slipped through the cracks of film history. It is by far much better than some other New York films of the same era such as: "The French Connection" or "The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3". There is a gritty reality to this film which also manages to effectively use humor to further the plot line. It's engaging from start to finish and hasn't tarnished with age as is the case with the above two examples.Ron Liebman turns in a bravura performance as "Batman" and it's a shame his career didn't take off as a result of this project.Gordon Parks directs and, coming as it does after "Shaft", it at first appears to be a strange choice. Yet it is the flip side of that earlier effort and approached with just as much in your face machismo.Unfortunately this film has not been made available on either DVD or VHS in the United States. United Artists really has a gem on their hands and it's a shame they're not doing anything with it.