I've tried this one a couple of times, but never warmed to it As others have mentioned, this feels like a TV movie - ironically, "The Killers", which WAS made for TV feels more cinematic than "Madigan" (I like "The Killers" quite a bit - switching the perspective from the cops to a morbidly curious assassin was so smart - and brought the story right up into the 60s) It's the melodrama and comic strip dialogue that sinks it for me - everything is emphatic and flat Good cast But as a story, it feels distant, a soap opera seen through the wrong end of a telescope
For me this falls into the batch of Siegels that feel a little too made-for-TV and don't really work as a standalone feature. I'm kind of shocked this wasn't intended to be a pilot. There's the scattershot pacing that would probably benefit from commercial breaks every 15 minutes; plot threads that don't intersect whatsoever; tertiary characters that seem important but you don't see again. It's been awhile but I seem to recall Widmark doesn't even have as much screentime as Fonda, even though his name is in the title! A fun time capsule nonetheless.
A gritty, old fashioned - in the best way possible - detective yarn. Don Seigel never really disppoints. I've had the Kino release for years.
I've tried this one a couple of times, but never warmed to it
As others have mentioned, this feels like a TV movie - ironically, "The Killers", which WAS made for TV feels more cinematic than "Madigan"
(I like "The Killers" quite a bit - switching the perspective from the cops to a morbidly curious assassin was so smart - and brought the story right up into the 60s)
It's the melodrama and comic strip dialogue that sinks it for me - everything is emphatic and flat
Good cast
But as a story, it feels distant, a soap opera seen through the wrong end of a telescope
For me this falls into the batch of Siegels that feel a little too made-for-TV and don't really work as a standalone feature. I'm kind of shocked this wasn't intended to be a pilot.
There's the scattershot pacing that would probably benefit from commercial breaks every 15 minutes; plot threads that don't intersect whatsoever; tertiary characters that seem important but you don't see again. It's been awhile but I seem to recall Widmark doesn't even have as much screentime as Fonda, even though his name is in the title! A fun time capsule nonetheless.
To me it played like an extended pilot for a sixties cop show. Which in my book is a good thing! 😁👍
I would love to have seen more of these detectives.
Probably should rewatch this. I think i built it up too much in my head and IMO the multiple storylines took away from the main one.