Yaphet Kotto and Anthony Quinn star as these two rugged detective that have to deal with a homicide involving Mobsters both Italian and black.
The main premise for the film is fairly basic. A mafia transaction is going on involving $300,000. A secondary group gets involved and tries to steal the money. The whole thing goes self the robbers shoot up the Mobsters steal the money and kill a few police officers as well.
This leads to an escalation where you have the police and different groups of mobsters looking for these guys. The police were just doing a routine investigation but the Mobsters are going to teach them a lesson. This becomes doubly problematic when you consider that there's the Italian mob and the black mob. Black guys don't really care. It's just one more group of thugs going around causing trouble. But the Italian mafia has something of a superiority complex.
They want to prove that they still own New York and are willing to step on everyone's toes to show it.
Eventually all three of the assailants who robbed in the mafia are found out and the Mobsters make it their business to not only kill but the Butcher and torture these men to prove a point. Meanwhile the police department is having its own problems as an old-school police detective has to put up with a new younger man who's taking over the investigation. Not only is the younger guy more qualified; but he's African. So it looks good on certain political platforms. The police department can use this as an excuse to get rid of some of their older, more tired, problematic officers.
It's one of those no sugar-coating kind of films. Where it wants to show you exactly just how miserable everything is. From the bigotry and racism all the way down to the systemic oppression of an African man who's getting up there in years has no education and has been in the prison system (oh and has a medical problem). Essentially saying that this guy; No matter how good his efforts are. Is never going to get anywhere. So he might as well just turn to crime.
Just looking at it as a film it's pretty good. It's consistently entertaining and has some decent action and the story (despite its lack of characterisation) is captivating enough to follow.
Hands down the best part of this movie is Richard Ward. His slightly over-the-top Charisma as the local crime Lord of Harlem mixed in with his very unique voice and overall stature makes for one of the more interesting criminals in a mobster film.
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