Report to the Commissioner
Tags: neo noir

Plot synopsis:
Patty Butler (Susan Blakely), an attractive young female police officer, is pretending to be a runaway girl with the nickname of "Chicklet." She has been given permission by the Department to be the live-in girlfriend of Thomas "Stick" Henderson (Tony King), a known drug dealer, so that they can gather evidence against him. To back up her cover story, Detective Bo Lockley (Michael Moriarty) has been given an almost impossible assignment: without being told she is actually an undercover officer, he is instructed to spend a few weeks trying to find this young runaway "Chicklet," who is believed to be somewhere in New York City. By Bo's actions of openly looking around and trying to find her, this will end up being reported back to Stick, which should convince him that his girlfriend really is a runaway.
Bo has no idea that his assignment is basically a fool's errand being used as a cover story. Amazingly enough, Bo is a determined and persistent detective and, despite what should have been a hopeless task, he tracks Chicklet to a disco club in the city. Chicklet is unaware of this effort by her superiors to solidify her cover; she is terrified that this cop is going to blow her cover. So she promises to meet him the next day if he just leaves. Bo is thanked by his supervisor, Lt. Seidensticker (Vic Tayback), and told to "forget about her" and go back to his previous assignment. Either infatuated with Chicklet or not able to just allow her to be another young girl abandoned by the system, when she fails to show the next day as she promised, he goes to Stick's loft to rescue her.
In the process, Bo and Stick become engaged in a firefight, with Chicklet caught in the crossfire. Stick is able to escape the apartment. Stick runs across town barefoot, carrying a handgun and dressed only in boxer shorts, pursued by Bo into a department store, where they are trapped in a Mexican standoff in one of the store's elevators. Eventually the police barricade the elevator, and Bo's partner Crunch (Yaphet Kotto) grabs Bo when he and Stick leave through the elevator's emergency exit ceiling panel. Bo having been pulled to safety, the police open fire on Stick, killing him.
In the aftermath of the firefight and the subsequent killing of Stick, it is discovered that Officer Butler has been killed in Stick's loft by Bo, and an investigation has to be made as to whether he was negligent. It's determined that she was killed as a result of Bo trying to defend himself from Stick shooting at him, and thus the shooting was accidental.
Bo, however, is so depressed by what he has done that he hangs himself in his jail cell before he finds out that it was an accident. The film is in effect, a report of an incident to the Police Commissioner, which explains the title.

Review: or Prince of the City, but just as important as one of the breakthrough films that suggested cops could be the bad guys, or, more accurately," ...there are no good guys, there are no bad guys, there's only you and me and we two disagree..".
If, by chance you ever see this on the rental shelf, or late night TV, watch it, and you won't be sorry, even if only to see a chronicle of the times before anti-heroes regularly wore badges."Homicide" (also starring Yaphet Kotto), "Law and Order" (also, originally, starring Michael Moriarity)...even "Hill Street Blues" owe a debt to this gritty, depressing view of the law enforcement establishment.In retrospect, watching this film adds significance to the subsequent work of its company..
Report to the Commissioner is a film about a misfit detective who does not heed the warning of his senior partner and gets himself into one beautiful jackpot as Andy Sipowicz would put it.
It's an underrated classic film from the seventies with an interesting cast and a lot of good performances.Abby Mann wrote the original screenplay of Report to the Commissioner and Mann who is famous for writing Judgement at Nuremberg also is the creator of that classic police series Kojak from the seventies.
Shooting the thing entirely on location in New York really helps with the believability of the plot.Michael Moriarty plays a young and very naive detective assigned to what looks to be the Midtown North Precinct in Manhattan.
He comes from a police family and he's assigned to partner with Yaphett Kotto who worked with Moriarty's father.At the same time Susan Blakely is a young, fresh faced, but most experienced detective whose all American good looks fool a lot of perpetrators.
She decides to get close to a big time drug dealer played by Tony King to get the goods on him.To make her cover as a runaway sound feasible, higher up captain Hector Elizondo has Moriarty make some routine inquiries looking for Blakely under her street name of Chicklet.
He turns in a fine performance as a bureaucratic cop real good at department politics, but a real snake as a human being.In one of his earliest roles is William Devane who has only one scene in the film questioning Moriarty about what's happened.
You will remember him.Report to the Commissioner is a nice look at the Seventies in New York and a great police drama.
You will agree that Yaphett Kotto gave Moriarty the best advice about knowing the players in a given situation..
I just got back from a film club screening of Report to the Commissioner, followed by a Q & A with Jonathan Demme...I loved it!I thought that Michael Moriarity's performance was amazing; he was able to capture the ambivalence of wanting to do "the right thing", according to his value system, and carrying out the legacy that his father had wanted for his older brother, who'd been killed in Vietnam.His internal torture was brilliantly played in the elevator scene, in which he was wordless, but communicated his conflict and terror chillingly nonetheless.The most touching scene for me was when he was giving his statement to the police officials.
Perhaps it's because we lived through times that make this film cinema verite'.
A not too likable, idealistic young detective is given an assignment which was unnecessary and therefore led to a tragedy and a shakeup in the police hierarchy.
I liked the way the film jumped back and forth in time and depicted life in the department and in the inner city realistically.
The 70s were definitely a great time for cinema, giving us gritty NYC thrillers and dramas like "Across 110th Street", "Serpico", "The French Connection", and "Dog Day Afternoon".
The story allows for some tense scenarios, and offers an interesting look into departmental politics within the police department, and how this sort of thing can create its share of victims.Michael Moriarty stars as Beauregard "Bo" Lockley, a hippie-ish rookie detective on the police force who's overwhelmingly naive.
He's partnered with the hard-boiled veteran Richard "Crunch" Blackstone (Yaphet Kotto), and gets a little taste of the street life.
His own "doing good" mentality gets him into a lot of trouble when he ends up shooting Patty Butler (Susan Blakely), a beautiful young detective working deep undercover.
She'd made the bold decision to move in with a drug pusher, Thomas "Stick" Henderson (Tony King) to get the goods on him, and Lockley had been fed a line of bull about her identity in order to make the whole thing look good.
Now the NYPD has to decide what to do with this mess, and how much to tell the commissioner (Stephen Elliott).For this viewer, the only real debit was Moriarty.
Fortunately, there's lots of heavy hitters here to pick up the slack: Kotto, Blakely, Hector Elizondo, Michael McGuire, Dana Elcar, Bob Balaban, William Devane, Elliott, Vic Tayback.
And it's cool to see a young Richard Gere making his film debut as Billy the pimp.
Real life NYC detectives Sonny Grosso and Albert Seedman have small roles.Some of the story is played out in the form of interviews, helping us to get insight into character motivations.
The entire sequence on the elevator is riveting, especially since we definitely get a sense of how hot it must be in there for Moriarty and King.
And Balaban figures in what has to be one of the most original "tailing" sequences seen on film.
I believe it was based on a true event and is documented in the NYPD files.As for the movie it was one of the best and well acted movies of the seventies in my opinion.
I have been trying to get a copy of it for years.The movies involves a screw-up that leaves a female undercover cop dead because the brass feel asleep and later looked for and found a scapegoat, sound familiar?
As I mentioned the acting was great, all of the cast acted as if they been NY City cops at some point in their lives..
I thought I cleared that up when I reviewed "Slaughterhouse Five" A great cast in a fascinating gritty 70's crime thriller, VISUALLY much in the vein of French Connection, Taking of Pelham 1,2 3 or Panic in Needle Park.
The sequence with Bob Balaban as the maniac amputee was brilliant, Susan Blakely is beautiful, story is fascinating.
Thank god I had the chance to see this on film (as a pristine 16mm print) I'm looking forward to seeing the 2nd reel..
This picture is interesting because in the middle of all the crime stuff, it's center is really a chewy for relationships (the kind that guys write after watching 'The Dirty Dozen' or 'Serpico' 20 times), and it is that dark center of distrust with it's dangerous home truths that provides the engine of drama.Ever feel like that's all life is -- police stories?
The wardrobe, the Tidyman script, the Tosi cinematography in New York, and with the tortured performance of Moriarty there you have it.
"Report to the Commissioner" happens every day here, ask James Mills who wrote it, he has since discovered it happens all over the world.Watch 'The Way We Were' after to see Blakely just coming on the scene, if this one is too dark for you, or, 'Who'll Stop the Rain' to see Moriarty..
The story was exceptional, and told a tragic story of corruption and dishonesty within the New York Police Force.The movie, however, thoroughly disappointed me.
The decision to cast Michael Moriarty as the young, out-of-his-element cop was a mistake.
A decent opportunity to portray a gripping, true-life episode, goes down the drain with a very questionnable casting decision.What made this doubly disappointing was the excellent performances from the rest of the cast, and the gritty, realistic look of a grimy New York, and the slimy characters slithering around under the surface..
****SPOILERS*** there's sleazy goings on in the the NYPD in "Report to the Commissioner" with policewoman Patty Butler, Susan Blakley, ending up dead with a bullet in her chest during a wild and deadly shoot-out in her boyfriends drug dealer Thomas "Stick" Henderson, Tony King, loft apartment.
It turns out that Officer Butler's killer in non other the NYPD Det. Beaueguard, known as just plain Bo to his friends, Lockery ,Michael Moriarty.
Unknown to Officer Butler Det. Lockery was given the task to track her, known to Det. Lockery only as Chicklet, down to protect her undercover status by being told that she's a teenage runaway from the suburbs.Det. Bo Lockery a complete dud as a cop is only on the force because of the early 1970's NYC police youth recruitment drive to get the young people of the city to have something in common with the men in blue as well as Bo's dad being a former and very highly decorated New York City policeman.
We soon get to see in a number of flashbacks about this whole crazy and murderous mess and how Det. Lockery mindlessly got himself into it.The events that lead up to the shooting of policewoman Bulter started with Officer Butler herself volunteering to become Stick's women, or live in wife, so she could win over his confidence.
This action was done on Butler's part in order to get the goods on Stick as the city's top drug pusher and with that have him put away, and off the streets, for a long long time.
It has to be said that at first Butler's boss Let. Hanson, Michael McGuire, wasn't all that crazy for one of his cops, and a woman at that, being shacked up with the dangerous "Stick" Henderson.
Still with Offcer Butlers constant insistence, and her record of 283 felony arrests the year before, how could he refuse!To give Officer Butler some kind of cover the NYPD has the totally incompetent Det. Bo Lockery put on her tail without even giving him a photo of Butler or even her name.
Det. Lockery miraculously finds her with the help of the legless, and mentally unstable, street panhandler Joey, Bob Balaban, and street wise pimp Billy, Richard Gere!
This to the shock and disgust of Det. Lockery's boss back at the police precinct Let. Sedensticker, Vic Taybeck.
Lockery tracking Butler in effect blows the whole Henderson/Stick sting operation as well as ends up blowing a hole in Officer Butler's chest killing her.Det. Lockery himself is a piece of work being totally unqualified to be a cop, much less detective.
Det. Lockery is also a pain in the a** to his partner the tough and street smart Det. Richard "Crunch" Blackstone,Yaphet Kotto.
Det.Blackstone gets so unnerved and discombobulated, especially with Bo's annoyingly syrupy and insipid sing-song voice, in his having to put up with his schmuck of a partner annoying as well as bird brain antics that by the end of the movie he almost ends up drinking himself into a drunken stupor!
Finding out just who this Chicklet, really Offcer Butler, is Det. Lockery, like Travis Bickel a year later in the movie "Taxi Driver", becomes absolutely infatuated with her in trying to get Chicklet away from her pimp lover who in reality she's planning to bust.
With Det. Lockery seeing Chicklet, who's white, romping around practically nude with Stick, who's black, in his boxer shorts was just about all the abuse that he could take which soon leads to the bloody shoot-out that cost Chicklet's or Offic Butler's life.After a chase through the crowded streets of mid-town Manhattan and shootout in the elevator of Saks 5th avenue department store Stick, who was trapped in the elevator with Bo, ends up getting blown away by the NYPD.
The police department, in covering it's behind, tries to pin all the blame on the clueless Det. Lockery in Officer Butlers death but has so effectively incriminated itself in being behind Officer Butlers ridicules plan that the NYPD later decided to drop the whole thing.
The NYPD gives Det. Lockery another chance as a New York City policeman only to have the now emotionally crippled cop, who didn't know that he was about to be freed, put an end to it all by hanging himself in his prison cell.A sad commentary on how people totally unqualified end up wearing badges and carrying guns because of misguided policies by police departments all over the country.
In Lockerys case the unconceivable, him being a policeman, became a sad reality and that reality not only lead to Officer Butler's death but his own as well..
Or else we got nothing', talk about.Yeah, OK, I know, ain't the greatest film going', far from it, fact.But hey, you like them late 60's - early 70's Land Arks they called cars?
Nor did cars in "Report to the Commissioner" need computer geek tricks to get out of their own way, the way these 'hybrids' that resemble elephant suppositories do today, right?
This in turn whelped to an entire genre of ghoulish Gahan Wilson cartoons.Yaphet Kotto, the son of a Crown Prince of Cameroon - don't take my word for it, go look it up on this site, already, what, I got to do your homework too, crying out loud?
- commands this film in which a young Michael Moriarity plays the reluctant detective.And the Precinct House?
Oh, you're one these kids, here, thinks 'The Job' is about cops who dress up in sexy leotards, whisper at one another in sterile luxury CSI suites while computers solve their cases?Yeah.
Wake up, smell the Kerosene, there, Poochie.Real Precinct houses stunk like B.O., cigar smoke, junkie-sweat, cordite, and stuff ya can't write about here - use your imagination, if video games haven't erased it by now.
It's great to watch a film you remember as a kid, but haven't seen in a long time.
"Report to the Commissioner" is one of those films I remember liking a real lot, and I just watched it for the first time in forty years.
Funny how time makes you remember some things incorrectly - for instance, somehow I remembered Yaphet Kotto being in the elevator with Michael Moriarty, not "Stick" the heroin dealer played by Tony King.
(The elevator scenes are nothing short of spectacular.)"Report to the Commissioner" starts off a little slow and hap-hazard, but really picks up after a short while, mainly due to Moriarty's fine acting (although everyone else in the cast also does a great job).
He's a tortured soul who really doesn't want to be a cop, and who gets into some serious trouble.
Moriarty puts on one of his best performances.Yaphet Kotto is great in anything he's in, and Susan Blakely was easily one of the most beautiful actresses of the seventies.
Other familiar faces are all over as the drama builds to a harrowing final half hour.Another thing I didn't remember was the ending, which hits hard, and kind of makes sense when you think about it.
There's also a wild foot chase through the rooftops and streets on Times Square (love the crowds watching the filming).The seventies was such a fantastic time for films - no political correct nonsense, just real street elbow grease film making, with actors and actresses who didn't mind getting their feet dirty (in Tony King's case, literally).
"Report to the Commissioner" is a good viewing..
Honestly a great old 70's throwback movie that captures the colors, sights, sounds, and smells...and sometimes seedy circumstances that were those times.
Not knowing who was in it beyond Michael Moriarity and Yaphet Kotto, it was fun naming the future stars of both the little and big screen in this film.
HInt: there are at least 5, not including Moriarity and Kotto.The story line is fairly predictable including the "shocking" ending, but there are some great scenes: crippled beggar hitching a ride on a taxi in Times Square (can you say Michael J Fox in Back to The Future?); face to face "mexican standoff" in an small elevator (Reservoir Dogs redux - without all the F words); roof top chase on foot - except in this case a slow limping white boy catches the slim athletic black guy (not gonna happen) - reminiscent of free running opening scene in Casino Royale.And finally in the predictable "hang the cop out to dry" scene Michael Moriarity implicates himself far better than any interrogator ever could!
The more I think about it, this was a ground-breaking movie that predates some of the classics we all love - and introduced some great future stars.
Bad tag line for a good movie.
I haven't seen this movie in years, but I would not mind seeing it again.
Pretty good, gritty cop movie.
When I think back on that movie, I now imagine it as if a young Gordon Clapp played the lead.
Yaphet Kotto is rightly well-remember for this movie.
But I would not want to see this movie remade only because I generally do like to see remakes.
While "Report to the Commissioner" isn't a perfect movie, there is always a kernel of interest to keep viewers interested enough to watch to the very end.
The first half I will admit is weaker than the second half - actor Michael Moriarty seems too wimpish and naive to be a police officer, and the plot moves along very slowly.
But even during this weaker first half, the movie offers a fascinating slice of life of what New York City was like in the early 1970s; you can really feel the grit and atmosphere.
Fans of cynical 1970s cop movies will enjoy this best, though it's also rewarding to others, provided they possess a reasonable amount of patience..
I really wanted to like this movie but I just could not.
Any movie where Richard Gere is an extra has a good cast.
I mean hey, Michael Moriatry, Yaphet Kotto, and Suan Blakely is hard to beat.