(1967)
3
Bruce Eder
Buzz Kulik's Warning Shot (1967) was, on its face, an attempt by Paramount Pictures and producer Bob Banner to revive the 1940s-style crime drama. There were many such productions during the second half of the 1960s, theatrically from Frank Sinatra (The Detective, Tony Rome, Lady in Cement) and others (Madigan, etc.), and on television in the guise of series such as Mannix and made-for-TV features like Fame Is the Name of the Game. This was one of the best of them, and although there are moments -- especially in the opening credit design -- that make one think of a TV movie, the feature holds up well as a theatrical work. David Janssen starts out pretty dour as a hardboiled detective facing the end of his career and a possible prison term for a shooting that he believes -- knows -- was justified. He opens the movie looking and sounding like an even more serious version of Jack Webb's Sgt. Joe Friday (parts of this movie play like big-budget expansions of a Dragnet episode), and in the course of the plot, he gets pounded brutally, looking much worse for wear than he ever did on The Fugitive. The big-name stars who work with him give what amounts to generous cameo appearances -- the work of George Sanders, Steve Allen, Walter Pidgeon, and Eleanor Parker confined to a single scene each (likely an afternoon's work each). There are all kinds of period details that make this movie especially entertaining to see in the 21st century; Warning Shot came out of the ferment of the mid-'60s, a period in which the public was questioning the role and purpose of the police, and it sings with topicality, in its casting and look, and the Jerry Goldsmith score, a bold, angry-sounding jazz-rock-blues amalgam. Thanks to director Kulik's penchant for lots of odd camera angles and very busy editing, coupled with Joseph Biroc's carefully lit color cinematography, one does get a true '60s analog to the classic 1940s crime film in terms of visual style, and with a considerably greater dose of violence (there's also one refreshingly honest -- though now stereotyped -- depiction of a gay designer, played by Vito Scotti, no less). The movie also tells some sad truths about human nature, both individually and collectively, that more recent incidents of police shootings, in New York and elsewhere, remind us haven't changed in 40 years.
releases for Warning Shot on AllMovie
Warning Shot (1967)
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Warning Shot
Paramount
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November 1, 2005 |
