No one writes a cop novel like Joseph Wambaugh, so it’s no wonder Hollywood has adapted so many of them, starting with The New Centurions. It follows rookie cop Roy (Stacy Keach, sans ‘stache, initially) being introduced to the night shift of the scummier areas of Los Angeles by near-retirement Kilvinski (George C. Scott, intense as always). As they make their rounds, the lonely old man imparts wisdom to his family-man protégé: “Look out the window. There’s always another asshole.”
The partners and the other cops of their division — a vanity-free Erik Estrada among them — are shown breaking up domestic disputes, rounding up street whores, working robberies big and small, hunting down a flim-flam man, making routine traffic stops, trolling parks for “fruits,” and chasing various perps.
There’s a reason they call it a beat: because it wears one down. Like Wambaugh’s excellent, reality-based novels, Richard Fleischer’s film pulls back the veil of being an officer, presenting a portrait that’s not at all gussied-up, revealing the repercussions of making an honest but deadly mistake, and the toll the job takes at home. A scene in which the wrong guy is fatally shot is powerful, but most tense is when the police attempt to wrest an abused newborn from its drunk mother.
The New Centurions isn’t your average Hollywood crime drama. When Kilvinski mentions retirement, any other movie would mark him for death before his last day on the job; instead, Stirling Silliphant’s script shows him taking a more realistic route. It’s a solid work, tonally false only with a late-in-the-game subplot of romance for Roy. —Rod Lott