Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: The Seven-Ups

This 1973 gritty cop movie ran at the theater, but I never got around to watching it for one reason or the other. Flash forward to now, and I finally did see it. I have to go with a big thumbs-up. In his first starring role, Roy Scheider (he played the police chief in the blockbuster hit Jaws) is a maverick NYPD cop who leads an elite undercover detective team called the Seven-Ups because they bust the felons who serve seven and up years of prison time. The director Philip D'Antoni also worked on cop thrillers like Bullitt and The French Connection. There's an exciting car chase that is filmed like the chase scene from The French Connection. The car chase ends with the pursuing car ramming into the rear end of a parked tractor-trailer and peeling off the roof a la Jayne Mansfield. Most of the movie was shot on location in New York City, so the landmarks are probably familiar to a native. The plot is fairly straightforward, and Schneider does a good job as a tough cop who gets the job done, and his bosses like that about him. The Seven-Ups reminds me of Serpico which I did get to see at the cinema when it ran. I liked The Seven-Ups, and Scheider was a solid actor who died in 2008.