bkoganbing Report to the Commissioner is a film about a misfit detective who does not heed the warning of his senior partner and gets himself into one beautiful jackpot as Andy Sipowicz would put it. It's an underrated classic film from the seventies with an interesting cast and a lot of good performances.Abby Mann wrote the original screenplay of Report to the Commissioner and Mann who is famous for writing Judgement at Nuremberg also is the creator of that classic police series Kojak from the seventies. The film does have a Kojak feel to it. Shooting the thing entirely on location in New York really helps with the believability of the plot.Michael Moriarty plays a young and very naive detective assigned to what looks to be the Midtown North Precinct in Manhattan. He comes from a police family and he's assigned to partner with Yaphett Kotto who worked with Moriarty's father.At the same time Susan Blakely is a young, fresh faced, but most experienced detective whose all American good looks fool a lot of perpetrators. She decides to get close to a big time drug dealer played by Tony King to get the goods on him.To make her cover as a runaway sound feasible, higher up captain Hector Elizondo has Moriarty make some routine inquiries looking for Blakely under her street name of Chicklet. The only problem is that Moriarty takes the assignment way too seriously, earnestly trying to win respect among his peers. It results in tragedy all around.The cast is really finely tuned in this film. Especially Elizondo who will chill you with his attitude. He turns in a fine performance as a bureaucratic cop real good at department politics, but a real snake as a human being.In one of his earliest roles is William Devane who has only one scene in the film questioning Moriarty about what's happened. Devane's a hotshot Assistant District Attorney who's practically salivating over a homicide conviction, another scalp for his lodgepole so to speak. You will remember him.Report to the Commissioner is a nice look at the Seventies in New York and a great police drama. You will agree that Yaphett Kotto gave Moriarty the best advice about knowing the players in a given situation.

sol1218 ****SPOILERS*** there's sleazy goings on in the the NYPD in "Report to the Commissioner" with policewoman Patty Butler, Susan Blakley, ending up dead with a bullet in her chest during a wild and deadly shoot-out in her boyfriends drug dealer Thomas "Stick" Henderson, Tony King, loft apartment. It turns out that Officer Butler's killer in non other the NYPD Det. Beaueguard, known as just plain Bo to his friends, Lockery ,Michael Moriarty. Unknown to Officer Butler Det. Lockery was given the task to track her, known to Det. Lockery only as Chicklet, down to protect her undercover status by being told that she's a teenage runaway from the suburbs.Det. Bo Lockery a complete dud as a cop is only on the force because of the early 1970's NYC police youth recruitment drive to get the young people of the city to have something in common with the men in blue as well as Bo's dad being a former and very highly decorated New York City policeman. We soon get to see in a number of flashbacks about this whole crazy and murderous mess and how Det. Lockery mindlessly got himself into it.The events that lead up to the shooting of policewoman Bulter started with Officer Butler herself volunteering to become Stick's women, or live in wife, so she could win over his confidence. This action was done on Butler's part in order to get the goods on Stick as the city's top drug pusher and with that have him put away, and off the streets, for a long long time. It has to be said that at first Butler's boss Let. Hanson, Michael McGuire, wasn't all that crazy for one of his cops, and a woman at that, being shacked up with the dangerous "Stick" Henderson. Still with Offcer Butlers constant insistence, and her record of 283 felony arrests the year before, how could he refuse!To give Officer Butler some kind of cover the NYPD has the totally incompetent Det. Bo Lockery put on her tail without even giving him a photo of Butler or even her name. Det. Lockery miraculously finds her with the help of the legless, and mentally unstable, street panhandler Joey, Bob Balaban, and street wise pimp Billy, Richard Gere! This to the shock and disgust of Det. Lockery's boss back at the police precinct Let. Sedensticker, Vic Taybeck. Lockery tracking Butler in effect blows the whole Henderson/Stick sting operation as well as ends up blowing a hole in Officer Butler's chest killing her.Det. Lockery himself is a piece of work being totally unqualified to be a cop, much less detective. Det. Lockery is also a pain in the a** to his partner the tough and street smart Det. Richard "Crunch" Blackstone,Yaphet Kotto. Det.Blackstone gets so unnerved and discombobulated, especially with Bo's annoyingly syrupy and insipid sing-song voice, in his having to put up with his schmuck of a partner annoying as well as bird brain antics that by the end of the movie he almost ends up drinking himself into a drunken stupor! Finding out just who this Chicklet, really Offcer Butler, is Det. Lockery, like Travis Bickel a year later in the movie "Taxi Driver", becomes absolutely infatuated with her in trying to get Chicklet away from her pimp lover who in reality she's planning to bust. In Lockery trying to set up and bust Stick himself he sneaks into Officer Butler and Stick's loft not knowing exactly what officer Butler, or Chicklet, is supposed to be doing there! With Det. Lockery seeing Chicklet, who's white, romping around practically nude with Stick, who's black, in his boxer shorts was just about all the abuse that he could take which soon leads to the bloody shoot-out that cost Chicklet's or Offic Butler's life.After a chase through the crowded streets of mid-town Manhattan and shootout in the elevator of Saks 5th avenue department store Stick, who was trapped in the elevator with Bo, ends up getting blown away by the NYPD. The police department, in covering it's behind, tries to pin all the blame on the clueless Det. Lockery in Officer Butlers death but has so effectively incriminated itself in being behind Officer Butlers ridicules plan that the NYPD later decided to drop the whole thing. The NYPD gives Det. Lockery another chance as a New York City policeman only to have the now emotionally crippled cop, who didn't know that he was about to be freed, put an end to it all by hanging himself in his prison cell.A sad commentary on how people totally unqualified end up wearing badges and carrying guns because of misguided policies by police departments all over the country. In them trying to be either politically correct or bending the rules and pulling strings in order to get relatives, in this case a son,into the department. All this because someone in their family was once, or still is, a police officer. Bo Lockely was about as qualified to be a cop, much less detective, as 98 pound weakling Woody Allan was qualified, back then in 1975, to fight Muhammad Ali or George Foreman for the Heavyweight Championship of the world. In Lockerys case the unconceivable, him being a policeman, became a sad reality and that reality not only lead to Officer Butler's death but his own as well.

jdamico5 I just got back from a film club screening of Report to the Commissioner, followed by a Q & A with Jonathan Demme...I loved it!I thought that Michael Moriarity's performance was amazing; he was able to capture the ambivalence of wanting to do "the right thing", according to his value system, and carrying out the legacy that his father had wanted for his older brother, who'd been killed in Vietnam.His internal torture was brilliantly played in the elevator scene, in which he was wordless, but communicated his conflict and terror chillingly nonetheless.The most touching scene for me was when he was giving his statement to the police officials. When he was questioned about his "subversive" college activities he poignantly stated that he had protested the (Vietnam) war. It was resonant for me, having been one of those protesters, and relevant to these times--- our war in Iraq, and the current political environment which implies that anyone protesting it is "un-American". Looking at the demographics on this site in terms of voting on this film, I find it very interesting that my age cohort gave this film the highest ratings. Perhaps it's because we lived through times that make this film cinema verite'. I'd love to hear other's opinions on this interesting phenomenon.

HiLander-4 You'll overlook this film unless you really are an Aquarian and remember its original theatrical run. Not as highly regarded as Serpico. or Prince of the City, but just as important as one of the breakthrough films that suggested cops could be the bad guys, or, more accurately," ...there are no good guys, there are no bad guys, there's only you and me and we two disagree..". If, by chance you ever see this on the rental shelf, or late night TV, watch it, and you won't be sorry, even if only to see a chronicle of the times before anti-heroes regularly wore badges."Homicide" (also starring Yaphet Kotto), "Law and Order" (also, originally, starring Michael Moriarity)...even "Hill Street Blues" owe a debt to this gritty, depressing view of the law enforcement establishment.In retrospect, watching this film adds significance to the subsequent work of its company.