(Originally posted on 7/1/21)
Currently re-watching: DRAGNET (1954), the feature-length theatrical version of the classic 1950s TV series in its original incarnation.
It's all the stuff I love about the TV show, but grittier and more hardboiled and violent. (A dark-haired Dub Taylor gets two blasts from a double-barrelled shotgun in the first scene! "They killed him twice," Joe Friday remarks later.) There's a very downbeat, melancholy ending too.
Jack Webb stars as the iconic Sgt. Joe Friday, a dedicated, no-nonsense cop who's still fairly young yet made prematurely sober and even somewhat cynical by his experiences. Ben Alexander is Friday's dependable partner and friend, Frank Smith.
In addition to his beautifully measured performance, I love the way Webb's often innovative direction combines some imaginative touches with extreme economy and a briskly efficient shooting style.
As usual, dialogue delivery is very terse. I wonder if the actors are reading their lines from cue cards and/or teleprompters (did they have those then?) as they did on the TV series, or if the longer schedule gave them time to actually memorize their lines. (I suspect the former.)
Ann Robinson (WAR OF THE WORLDS) plays an undercover police woman and Richard Boone is the captain in charge of the case. The movie also features Virginia Gregg, Dennis Weaver, Vic Perrin (the "Outer Limits" control voice), Olan Soule, James Griffith, and Virginia Christine.
Friday is tougher and more doggedly relentless than ever as he and Frank try to wear down an arrogant, seemingly untouchable suspect (Stacy Harris as "Max Troy") and pin the murder on him and his thug cohorts.
One scene even erupts in a rare fistfight that's full of action and leaves the two detectives bandaged and bloodied.
Friday gets his usual allotment of sharply-delivered cutdowns, telling one punk "Unless you're growing, sit down!" and countering an insult against his mother with "I'll bet your mother had a loud bark."
DRAGNET the movie is as sharply-folded and tightly-wound as the TV series, yet somehow there's just more of everything and it all has an irresistible noirish quality that blends in a very satisfying way with the show's inherent realism.
And as the laconic Joe Friday, lanky in his rumpled suit and observing it all from beneath the wide brim of his fedora, Jack Webb is better than ever.