Terzo grado

"Yeah, what?" - "Who are we getting to chew up the scenery as Mike Brennan?" - "You kiddin' me? You specialising in bustin' my b**ls? Send for Nick Nolte!" - "Nick (choke) Nolte? Are you talking to me? I've just been on the phone to the mayor and the D.A. is crawlin' up my ass. You're a dinosaur, Lumet. Your ideas don't fit today. I want your director's guild ID on this desk now. People have a nasty habit of gettin' DEAD around you!"

This is one of Lumet's three hour and always worthy examinations of police corruption and compromised idealism. This is similiar to his 'Prince of the city' although it's not let down by an actor like Treat Williams who was not up to the job. Q&A suffers from some over-ripe, stagey and over played performances that are allowed to run on longer than the scene's necessity. It also has such ugliness and perversion that you wonder whether the film really needed to be made as we have been down this road before. Hutton has the best scene whereby his heart is broken by a loyal old mentor who always warned him that it was inevitable.

The main problem I have with this film is the susposed racism of the Reilly character. I'm not sure about the point of the subplot and why would a man who has a coloured girlfriend be shocked that her father is black? Surely it was on the cards.