Serpico (1973)

Sidney Lumet's biographical film, based on the book by Peter Maas, is the always interesting story of Frank Serpico and eleven years of his career as an undercover policeman, a period in which he took a stand against police corruption - against both the grass eaters and the meat eaters -  and he is an impressive man, thanks to Pacino's great performance, but the film never manages to convey the sense of danger he no doubt faced.

★★★★☆

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Blue Steel (1990)

I like Kathryn Bigelow's gripping Blue Steel about a rookie cop who just 24 hours into the job blasts away a supermarket robber, has her badge taken away and ends up the object of a gun-fetishist's psychopathy, and I like it so much I've watched it three times now, but full of awful policework and characters' really dumb decisions, it is best considered a slice of throwaway psychosexual horror (with horror stalwart Jamie Lee Curtis really just terrorised by another nightmarish Michael or Fog) than a more meaningful thriller/drama - there's nothing intelligent said, for instance, about gun violence or female cops or male violence.

★★★☆☆

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D-Tox (aka 'eye see you') (2002)

Cops in a snowed-in detox facility are being picked off one-by-bloody-one in this movie, more mindless slasher than intelligent whodunnit despite the classic Agatha Christie set-up, with Sylvester Stallone playing a cop undergoing treatment for trauma after his own wife fell victim to an eye-poking serial drill killer with a ridiculous sprawling, poorly defined modus operandi, naturally still on the loose.

★☆☆☆☆

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