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Very Cool!!!

A lot of fun.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

I have read the book and seen the movie; however, they both did not show the bigot side of police when it came to dealing with union activists, civil rights organizations, blacks, other minorities, etc. Police work is dangerous; however, it would not be so dangerous if the police got rid of their racist, sexist, political, and ideology attitudes against the rest of the community. The police in America are always voting and upholding the same economic, political, and social system that causes many people to turn to crime just to survive which in turn makes the streets dangerous for the police. The book and movie never show incidents of dealing with rich people who threaten to destroy a police officer's career if they are arrested.If police fought for progressive change in America, then they would not have to face high divorce rates, suicide, and drunkenness on and off the job. Then again, if the crime rate in America was low like it is in Canada, Japan, and Europe, I think the police would get drunk out of sheer boredom of the job because they get too few calls. Many of them live for that adrenalin rush.

I picked up this movie at a local flea market. I noticed George C. Scott was a star and it was a cop movie. Being a fan of law enforcement films, I paid $2 for a VHS copy. When I finally was able to sit down and watch it, I found it wanting. There was no central plot to the story, just the random calls that this "rookie" and "veteran" receive. It was entertaining to see the old timer's methods of dealing with the prostitutes, as well as Isabel Sanford playing one of them. The "rookie" struggles to keep his family together and turns to the bottle as the rigors of police work take their toll. There is some insight given to the lives of the officers while out of uniform, but there is no depth. The entire film seemed to have the quality that one might expect from an episode of Police Story or one of the other many cop shows that graced the TV screen in the 1970s. I found the film full of clichés about life as a cop. Of course, given this film's date, perhaps it was the "cliche setter".

This is the ONLY movie about police work I've ever seen which is as close to the real thing as it gets. I know, I worked the street as a policeman for 20 years.It's not all coffee and doughnuts wearing that blue uniform. People you are supposed to serve and protect spit at you and shoot at you. As the movie depicts, policework as a uniform officer goes from the routine theft to a gun fight.Casting and acting for this film was first rate. Although produced nearly 40 years ago it still holds true today. Anybody who wants to be a cop should see this film first. Mike Palmiter, Williams IN [email protected]

Joseph Wambaugh has written a lot of great books over the four decades of his literary career. My experience with him started in eighth grade in 1972 when I read The New Centurions, a blisteringly honest and terrifying book about the lives of three rookie patrolman in LA during the early 60s. It was easily the most grown-up book I had ever read (my mom thumbed through it and was appalled at the language; yet she let me finish it) and when I got to see the 1972 movie (butchered on NBC in '73 or '74), I had reread it and knew everything the little old ladies with the scissors had hacked out. Even with the obligatory mangling for our living room sensibilities, Richard Fleischer's film is a well-acted and gritty TV-looking version of Wambaugh's great, searing novel.For the most part, the casting--THE critical step to putting the book on screen--was dead on. Stacy Keach nails Roy Fehler, George C. Scott is a slightly more buff, less urbane Andy Kilvinsky, and Jane Alexander (who is beautiful because she isn't) embodies Fehler's estranged wife, Dorothy). My only complaint is in casting Erik Estrada as Sergio. I know why he was picked--a blonde Hispanic would have confused viewers who had not read the book, but some skilled writing may have gotten the real Sergio across on screen. This is no insult to Estrada. He's hardly on screen, but this was before the excremental CHIPS, the show that ruined his career while making him a household name, and he is quite good for the few minutes we get him.The problem with The New Centurions is that, since it is designed for mass consumption, it has been rendered more TV cop drama than searing expose of urban policing. It looks authentic, but the color and depth of the images never really fill the wide screen, dooming it to look like it belongs on the small one.In comparison though, this is a much more successful adaptation of a Wambaugh work than the open-mouthed horror of Robert Aldrich's The Choirboys. That book was even more dark (how Wambaugh was able to make such a brutal novel so funny is still an amazement to me), but the 1977 movie was about as awful--and unfunny--as you could ever hope to miss.Which, in comparison, makes The New Centurions all the better. Don't get me wrong, TNC is a flawed film, but it is a good one on the whole. I would just, strongly, suggest you read the book--and The Choirboys--first to get the real flavor of one of America's better crime writers (and social critics).