Busting

Stand by for plenty of action and, said The Listener, "There are laughs galore" in this bright, breezy and fast moving comedy-thriller which marked the impressive feature film debut of writer-director Peter Hyams, later to make such pictures as Capricorn One, Outland and 2010: Odyssey Two. Hyams' witty and inventive script casts Elliott Gould as Michael Keneely and Robert Blake as Patrick Farrel, a pair of Los Angeles vice squad officers who find themselves in bitter conflict with their corrupt superiors as they wage a two-man war against crime czar Carl Rizzo (Allen Garfield). And, even after they are demoted after a hair-raising shootout, the two dedicated cops are ready to break every rule in the book to bring their quarry to justice... Gould and Blake are first rate and strong support comes from Garfield, Cornelia Sharpe as a high-class call girl and William Sylvester as a smooth lawyer Hyams never lets the thrills and laughs let up and stages a brilliant shoot-out in a supermarket and an exciting climatic chase and, noted the New Statesman he "Keeps up a nippy pace" in a film that, said Rolling Stone, "Is so well done that it seems the most enjoyable of the recent cop pictures".