Spoilers. Somebody is killing the policewomen of New York, perhaps because they are digging up dirt on some of their male colleagues and squealing to Internal Affairs. Angie Dickinson, as Pepper Adams, I mean Kelly Mulcahaney, comes to suspect she may be next when she begins receiving the silent serial late-night phone calls that the others have received. The murderer turns out to be a bad cop who is offed by other cops in order to preserve "the honor of the badge." Charles Durning plays a retired ex-cop, Kelly's dad, very pleasantly, Irish accent and all. He's always a treat to watch and always likable, even when he's doing heavies. Durning, born in a New York suburb, participated as an infantryman in the Normandy invasion and contemporary photos show a slender, handsome, thoughtful soldier. He may be the best thing about this routine police mystery/thriller. New York City locations aren't used particularly well, the other performances are mostly fuzzy, and Durning himself doesn't have much screen time. An attempt at a car chase is thrown in but that's routine as well. Yaphet Koto is about up to Durning, as an IA officer, and that's about it. It isn't an insulting film, nor an especially bad one. It's just has a kind of recycled feel to it. I remember an episode of Pepper Adams (the last one, or maybe the only one, I bothered watching) in which Angie Dickenson and Earl Holliman, playing police officers, discussed what "the crooks" had done. They actually used that term in the dialogue -- "the crooks." That's pretty amateurish writing. I had the same feeling about this entire film. Don't bother with it if anything else is on.
Review of Prime Target
