seven ups new centurions

As captured on film, 1970-something New York City has an almost tactile quality: gritty, grey and dangerous. It's the perfect backdrop for a movie like The Seven Ups (1973), a crime drama with several ties to The French Connection, including star Roy Scheider, technical advisor Sonny Grosso and stunt coordinator Bill Hickman who stages a mid-film thrill ride through crowded city streets that deserves to be on the all-time car chase top ten list!

Heading up an elite unit of supercops who specialize in crimes worth at least a seven-year sentence (hence the title), Buddy Manucci (Scheider) has been getting inside information on the local bad guys from his childhood pal, Vito (Tony Lo Bianco). But Vito has been playing both sides, and now a string on mafia kidnappings throws suspicion on Buddy's team as dirty cops.

The Seven Ups has so many things going for it - including a passionate performance from Scheider, an ominously epic musical score and the aforementioned chase scene between a pair of recklessly revved up Pontiacs - that it's almost mystifying how it fails to make any emotional connections. Most of the blame probably lies with first-time director Philip D'Antoni, who gets the look right, but never makes us care for the cops whose lives are on the line. It's like the brilliant work of a second-unit film crew that never quite comes together.

Twilight Time's 3000-copy limited edition Blu-ray is the next best thing to a time machine, offering up an immaculate visual presentation of NYC at its grimiest. The hefty slate of extras includes an isolated music track (including an additional unused score by Johnny Mandel!), commentary, multiple interviews and stunt featurettes, trailer, stills and liner notes.

Meanwhile, over on the West Coast, things weren't any easier for new recruits on the LAPD. The New Centurions (1972), based on Joseph Wambaugh's first novel (and written while he was still a working detective) presents an episodic story that centers around rookie Roy Fehler (Stacy Keach) and his relationship with the paternal Andy Kilvinski (George C. Scott), an old pro who relies on instinct more than the letter of the law. With a cast full of familiar TV law enforcement faces, including future C.H.I.P. Erik Estrada and Hill Street Blues James Sikking, the film plays like a cinematic dry run for small screen cop shows to come.

Roy joins the force to pay the bills, working the night watch while he studies for law school. But the lifestyle and camaraderie become an addiction, and he soon winds up spending more time on the streets than he does at home. Meanwhile, his fellow trainees are facing their own personal crisis while juggling the colorful criminals who call East L.A. home. Amidst the chaos, Kilvinski shines like a beacon of righteousness, bending but not breaking until retirement pushes him over the edge.

Directed by Richard Fleischer and adapted by Sterling Silliphant (who'd use the same ensemble character format in disaster movies like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno) The New Centurions skips through plot points like a police scanner, providing the same sort of staged thrills audience's today get from watching Live PD. But beyond the adrenaline rush, the film finds humanity in its cops and its criminals, with enough blame to go around for bad blood on both sides. As one line of Kilvinski's dialogue points out, "Lawyers and judges only see the bad guys, we're have to see the victims!" Cops don't get to make excuses, they just have to make the best of one bad situation after another, which the film's ultimately tragic point.

Twilight Time's 3000-copy limited edition Blu-ray looks just great in hi-def and includes an isolated music track, audio commentary, trailer and liner notes.