Madigan

Somewhere in Manhattan's Spanish Harlem, a couple of detectives park their car, climb the stairs of a sleazy tenement, pull out their guns and kick in a door. A hood named Barney Benesch, in bed with a broad, is surprised but not particularly flustered; he puts on his clothes and his steel-rimmed glasses, then pulls the bedcovers off the wide-eyed, naked girl and tells her to get his jacket. As she flits across the floor, the audience's eyes follow her avidly. So do the eyes of the detectives. Wham--Benesch has his gun out and the drop on them.

Thus begins Madigan--a good movie about some bad days at New York City's police department. From the commissioner on down, everybody is up to his badge in problems. Commissioner Anthony X. Russell (Henry Fonda) is sleeping with another man's wife and hating himself in the morning. His boyhood buddy, Chief Inspector Charles Kane (James Whitmore), has been caught double-dealing with a crime syndicate in order to protect his erring son. And as if letting Benesch (Steve Ihnat) get away were not bad enough Detective Dan Madigan (Richard Widmark) has all he can do to keep his pretty blonde wife (Inger Stevens) from blowing her top because she feels socially inferior and sexually frustrated.

Sorting out the sex lives, remoralizing he turpitude, and tracking down Benesch at the same time, makes for a taut, tough film that manages to survive such ludicrous lines as "This adultery is a lonely business, isn't it?" Commendably long on documentary detail about police procedure, Madigan is refreshingly short on sadism. Henry Fonda is at his uptight best as the up-from-the-ranks commissioner, so righteous that as a cop on the beat he sent back the butcher's Christmas turkey. Richard Widmark is engaging as the detective who lives "on the arm"--accepting all "police discounts." The skillful, dramatic use of Manhattan--indoors and out--should gladden the heart of Mayor John Lindsay and further his campaign to put a movie crew on every street in Fun City.

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