Blu-ray, DVD Release: Badge 373

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: April 24, 2012
Price: DVD $24.95, Blu-ray $25.95
Studio: Olive Films


Badge 373 movie sceneThe 1973 crime thriller movie Badge 373 carries the credit that it was “Inspired by the Exploits of Eddie Egan,” the New York City police detective whose work was also the subject of the award-winning 1971 movie The French Connection.

In Badge 373, Robert Duvall (Get Low) portrays Eddie Ryan, a tough and abrasive Irish cop who is forced to turn in his badge after scuffling with a suspect who then falls to his death from a rooftop. But that doesn’t stop Ryan from heading out on a one-man vigilante crusade to avenge his partner’s murder, all the while neglecting his new live-in girlfriend, Maureen (Verna Bloom, National Lampoon’s Animal House). Ryan’s investigation leads him to Puerto Rican drug kingpin Sweet Willie (Henry Darrow, A Life of Sin) and a shipment of guns for the Puerto Rican underworld.

Directed by Howard W. Koch (Andy Hardy Comes Home) and scripted by journalist Pete Hamill, the film also features a supporting turn by the real-life Egan as Duvall’s lieutenant.

No bonus features are on the DVD.

Here’s the original, no-nonsense trailer:

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.