So there's these two Italian mob families in New York fighting for control of. Not drugs, not money laundering. Hell not even gambling, but automotive parts.
One of the gangs has decided to start up their own Chop Shop circuit where they steal cars, rip them into hundreds of pieces and then sell them individually to various clients for massive financial gain.
And this whole scenario is causing mountains of tension.
In the middle of all this is a weird special police investigative unit that's designed to eliminate organized crime.
They're having a hell of a time of it.
All the families have enough loopholes and a political favour to keep themselves out of the hands of even the most obvious setups.
But that becomes irrelevant when one of these Mafia Hitman (A crazy guy named Washington) shoots one of the police captains and personal friend to our 'kind of' protagonist; Frank. As played by Frank Sinatra. Yes the naming convention was very creative on that one.
This single action causes Frank to lose it slightly and shoot the almost unarmed* criminal Washington with a shotgun at about 3 to 4 metres of range.
Needless to say there is no more Washington.
And this is where the movie completely changes gears.
Before this, it's a fairly basic police procedure in where a bunch of cops are staking out an organized crime Racket and trying to have the whole thing shut down. Only to consistently be screwed over by bureaucracy or paperwork as connect with even higher up monsters.
But now the police are taking things into their own hands and it becomes a little Soviet in their approach.
Frank and his crew disguise themselves as work today employees for some electronics companies and a few other manual labour jobs and actually shoot some of the mafia criminals themselves to purposely start up a mob War.
Now the movie becomes a story of Mobsters plotting against each other and debating just what it is that happened to cause the original hit.
They think the other family is against each other and constantly hire out Contract Killers to monitor or even assassinate people who they think are associated with the crime.
Not knowing that the police were the ones the instigate the whole thing to begin with.
But all this starts to fall apart as one of the police officers becomes a little too trigger-happy and decides to start shooting all their criminal delinquents, so he can cover up his own tail and keep the police out of the mob War.
This one police officer becomes a bigger problem than the mobs themselves and it stated that he's just as crazy as the Washington guy.
In fact that's kind of the theme of this movie.
Ludicrousy and the one or two nuts who can completely ruin an entire working organization.
So this movie was alot better than I was expecting it to be.
Honestly I was thinking it was just going to be a typical police thriller and that's what the first half of it is.
But then we got to shake up with the police assassination of the mobsters and a large part of the movie becomes just about the mafia dealing with the outbreak.
At one point I kind of forgot that Frank Sinatra and his Police Unit were even in the film.
Frank acting is surprisingly good for television movie. And I always have to be a bit iffy with Frank as his acting borders on bad to okay, depending on what production he's in.
But I found him pretty enjoyable here.
And of course I didn't know this until watching the movie but Richard Ward shows up. Which immediately gives it a point right there. I'm always happy to see that man pop up in a film.
As production goes it's decent. There's nothing in the movie that sticks out as all that unique or intriguing, but there's also nothing that's overly cheap or distracting.
There's one cutaway where you can tell a commercial supposed to be inserted that breaks up pacing a little bit.
But it's the only noticeable one and that's near the beginning. Otherwise it's fairly seamless. The movie could have easily been a bit shorter, but it's satisfactory for what it is.
The only dud in the movie was the romance and it's not a big enough to really bring anything down.
*So here's something I'm questioning. Frank is about to shoot Washington cuz he just killed his partner.
Now Washington is technically surrendered, but he still has the handgun in his hand and his fingers on the trigger.
So he still considered a dangerous threat.
Obviously what Frank does is wrong, but could you argue that Washington kind of brought it on himself?
And I mean this in the most straightforward sense.
That is of a armed criminal versus a cop.
Once we bring in inherent systemic oppression, racial profiling and police brutality along with bad understanding of mental illness, this whole scenario goes out the window and Frank really comes off like a jackass.
But still, you've got a criminal who just shot a police officer, still holding a gun firmly in his hand, who could theoretically try to kill you.
It's a really bad scenario all around.
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