Anybody seen this?

It's an 87th Precinct tale based on the book of the same name and written by the author, Evan Hunter, aka Ed McBain. It’s similar in some ways to other big city detective flicks of that era, like “Bullitt," "Dirty Harry," “The Night Stalker” and “Deathwish," but it’s easily the least of these because (1) the attempt to shoehorn humor into the life-or-death proceedings, à la “M*A*S*H” (1972), seems forced and (2) the script tries to juggle too many separate incidents with too many characters.

One example of the strained humor is the painters working in the headquarters throughout. But some of the humor works. If they would’ve toned down these kinds of artificialities the movie would’ve worked better IMHO. But working out the kinks in scripts take time and time means money.

In any case, if you can adapt to the movie’s peculiar tone there’s a lot to appreciate here, including the great cast -- Burt Reynolds, Tom Skerritt, Raquel Welch and Jack Weston -- which includes many recognizable faces on the side, like Charles Martin Smith, Steve Ihnat and Cal Bellini. It’s also worth noting that the film gets better as it moves along with the last act being the best. It was the obvious inspiration for the TV show Hill Street Blues.

I thought it was pretty enjoyable.