Overlooked Movies -- Madigan

If you like gritty cop movies and haven't see Madigan, you've missed a good one.  Look at the cast on the poster there on the left.  How could you go wrong?  And check out the director.  When it comes to cop movies, Don Siegel is hard to beat.  One puzzling omission is that Steve Ihnat's name isn't there.  He practically steals the show as a crazed killer that Madigan (Richard Widmark) and his partner have 72 hours to catch.  The have only 72 hours because that's how long the commissioner (Henry Fonda) gives them after Ihnat, whom they've already caught once, turns the tables on them and takes their guns.

Fonda has plenty of other problems, too, some personal, some departmental.  As you can see in the poster, the book the movie is based on is The Commissioner, but although he's the title character in the book, it's Widmark who's the one with the big role in the movie.  

This isn't one of those movies that's like a TV series where everything is wrapped up neatly before the credits roll.  Not everything ends the way you might expect it to, and not everything is tidied up.  It's not a feel-good film, but it's certainly worth checking out.