"Newman's Law" was a movie originally intended as a pilot for a television series...a series that was never to be. It seems that George Peppard had just finished filming his "Banacek" series and was looking for another TV project. And, after seeing the film, I can understand why the networks passed on it. After all, the movie was about an L. A. cop...and played NOTHING like "Dragnet" or "Adam-12", series that glorified policework AND tried to portray them realistically. Instead, it was more like "Serpico" and "Dirty Harry"....pretty potent stuff for TV.
VInce Newman (Peppard) is a detective working the Narcotics Division. He and his partner just uncovered a big crime...with a dead man, a thief and a whole lotta illegal drugs. But the best part is that the mobster Falcone is implicated in all this and now the D. A. has enough evidence to have him extradited to the US to face charges. In order to muddy the case, the mob starts paying off cops and making it look like Newman is on the take. Now this set-up really makes no sense--he and his partner just located the biggest stash of drugs the department ever confiscated and he helped the case against Falcone...and now suddenly every cop seems to believe he's dirty?! This just didn't make a lot of sense. But then, this is an action-oriented script and believability didn't seem high on their agenda.
This show would never play well if it was made today. It's not the violence level but the glorification of vigilante style police work and a complete disregard for the Bill of Rights (such as Newman working over folks he arrests as well as shooting up the mobster's compound for kicks). In other words, the show seems to say that the best way to fight evil is to ignore the law and bust heads....or worse.
The bottom line is that this is a movie featuring lots of shooting, things exploding and the like...with very little in the way of realism or characterization. I especially had to laugh at the execution scene at the nursing home...it was utterly ridiculous and made "Dirty Harry" look like the height of realism!
