Puerto Rican leaders in the South Bronx protested this cops-and-killers film set in a New York precinct nicknamed after an embattled outpost in a 1948 John Wayne Western. Indeed, in the attempt to capture the sense of the place, the script tends to be melodramatic, exploitative and despairing. Paul Newman plays an idealistic veteran of the force, while Ed Asner, a tough captain assigned to shape up the precinct, acts mostly by folding his beefy arms and glowering. Both also occasionally forget to use their dese-and-dem Bronx accents. Director Dan Petrie doesn't follow through on the cop killing that sets the film in motion but focuses instead on an affair between Newman and a darkly seductive nurse with a heroin problem, Rachel Ticotin. The result is a sometimes gripping if brutal movie. (R)
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