The Seven-Ups

A now almost forgotten but really excellent old school police thriller. Roy Scheider was still going from film to film as a a-list star, with a face not yet disfigured by plastic surgery. The story is straightforward and dark, in the tradition of the best parts of Dirty Harry, and there’s also a car chase that equals or even surpasses in intensity the legendary ones in Bullitt or The French Connection. Some scenes are staged so originally (the car wash robbery, the interrogation in the hospital) that I have never seen anything like it in any other film. And that is appreciated. (04/13/2014)

If you're the producer of Bullitt and The French Connection, you can be expected to deliver something like this. Philip D'Antoni advances the story more through visuals than words, Don Ellis launches neurotic loops when cars are in the car wash, Richard Lynch exemplifies psychopathy with his mere appearance, and Scheider's character as the head of a unit with unconventional methods is best depicted in the scene where he disregards a stop sign during a chase. By the way, the car chase in the middle of the film is absolutely top-notch. Two Pontiacs race through New York like Lightning McQueen recently did in Frisco, with horns blaring, tires screeching, and engines roaring, culminating in a tribute to the tragic end of Jayne Mansfield. I can't help but daydream about how it would have turned out if Friedkin had directed it. (09/26/2023)