Across 110th Street (1972)

Recommended on Amazon as a blaxploitation classic, I added Across 110th Street to my Christmas list, despite knowing little more than it had a soundtrack penned by Bobby Womack and featured the ageless and superb Yaphet Kotto as the young, liberal Lieutenant Pope. Pope is forced to team up with the older, tired Captain Mattelli (Anthony Quinn) when a $300,000 money exchange between two Mafioso and three Harlem blacks is hijacked by three robbers - one of whom, Antonio Fargas, is so annoying he might as well be holding an badly written banner and singing 'Poor Scouser Tommy' - who kill the five, and two police officers during their getaway. Pope and Mattelli attempt to reach these three before the unholy alliance of local Harlem crime boss Doc Johnson (the excellent Richard Ward) and wannabe Mafia don Nick D'Salvio (Anthony Franciosa) catch them first.

Almost unremittingly dark in tone, the film is a real period piece; both in terms of its portrayal of the sometimes brutal life on the Harlem streets, and the changing face of the NYPD. The film came hard on the heels of the Knapp Commission and reflects the internal divisions experienced as the force began to attempt to clean itself up, no more so than in the scene where Doc Johnson reveals to the newcomer Pope that Mattelli has been in his pay for a number of years, but fails to reach the same arrangement with Pope. The relationship between Pope and Mattelli also characterises the growing changes, the modern-thinking Pope (a relative rookie promoted, in Mattelli's eyes, through positive discrimination) horrified by a battle-hardened Mattelli's efforts to coerce information from suspects through overt violence, a juxtaposition revisited recently in 'Life on Mars'. The theme of racism also runs strongly through the whole film, whether underlying, as with Pope and Martelli, or in the disparaging and uneasy relationship between the Harlem blacks and the Mafia, which simmers with distrust.

Despite one or two flaws - the ending is a bit contrived and some of the acting a bit hammy, particularly in the slightly cartoony Mafia gang, this is a broadly superb piece with well-rounded characters - even the cold-eyed and ruthless John Harris (Paul Benjamin), the most vicious member of the three man robbery team is given a shred of humanity. At the price of a pint of Peroni from Amazon and others, it's well worth a look, standing up well against 'Dirty Harry' and other cop movies of the time.