The Seven-Ups are a team of NYPD officers who go outside the rules and are known for arresting criminals who receive sentences of seven years or more.
Led by Buddy Manucci (Buddy Manucci), the squad find their reputation used against them when an unknown party begins impersonating plainclothes cops to kidnap wealthy gangsters.
With the pressure building, Manucci goes on the trail of the pair of killers (Richard Lynch and Bill Hickman) who have been masquerading as his team.
With the success of Bullitt and The French Connection, producer Philip D'Antoni had a unique streak of success in Hollywood.
After a career in television, Bullitt represented D'Antoni’s big screen debut, and he would only have two other theatrical features, The French Connection, and this one, which is also his only big screen directorial effort.
I had never seen this movie before. And aside from knowing there was a car chase, I knew nothing of the story.
With its familiar cast and locale, The Seven-Ups often feels like a spiritual follow-up to the William Friedkin film. And that is probably the biggest knock against it.
Featuring a great cast of faces including Richard Lynch and future horror icon Joe Spinell, The Seven-Ups is ironically let down by a lack of specificity. The plot is complicated, with an antagonist who is playing both sides against each other.
The car chase combines the NYC locale of The French Connection with a similar concept as the chase from Bullitt. Some gags call back to the earlier chase sequences - the kids blocking the street; Richard Lynch firing a shotgun at Scheider’s car during the chase.
Despite its scale, it feels a bit overlong, and lacks the visceral impact of Doyle’s race against the assassin.
More plot-heavy and less character-driven, the film feels like a programmer entry in the police thriller sub-genre.It is also hard not to see this movie as a sequel to The French Connection: Scheider as the lead; secondary antagonist Tony LaBianco as the mastermind.
In terms of D'Antoni’s direction, the film is more classical and formalist in style than either of its predecessors. There is none of immediacy of Friedkin’s documentary-style approach.
More fundamentally, the film does not have a clear take on the titular characters. There was an ambiguity to the way 'Popeye' Doyle was presented. While Scheider is solid in the role, Buddy Manucci is more of a placeholder action hero. Even the narrative possibilities of the having an antagonist use the Seven Ups' reputation against them feels undercooked.
Because of its similarities to the prior films, and the lack of anything new, the film comes off as a tad anonymous.
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