Friedkin’s frenetic film stars William Petersen as a character who can’t walk past an obstacle without jumping over it. A chair, a fence, a table. The energy is great but there’s always the danger that you’re going to trip and fall flat on your face. There’s probably no way of knowing whether Petersen and Friedkin purposefully built this in as a metaphor, but whether they did or not, it works, because the golden boy, Chance, (Petersen) is heading for a mighty fall, a fall that is in part the result of this propulsive energy. The great thing about this quintessentially 80s movie is that it has no qualms about jackknifing the script and character in directions you never quite expect. Whilst Chance’s mission seems to be one of virtuous vengeance, it turns into a clusterfuck, (which permits for a truly gripping car chase). Morality becomes an abstract idea which has no application to the plastic realities of the here and now. The director’s bravura use of soundtrack, palette and even costume feel like a brash fuck you to any arbiters of taste: in this city we do things faster, harder and louder than anywhere else. Which leads, inexorably, to the sense that there’s a second metaphor at work here: the arbitrary nature of ethics in policing reflecting the arbitrary nature of ethics in film-making, where being beautiful is something to be turned to your advantage, where stars live fast and die young, and life moves on without missing a beat.
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