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Did you know that Frank Sinatra could have played the role of Dirty Harry?  He was one of sev­eral actors orig­i­nally approached for the role (John Wayne was another) but he bypassed the role.  Having Sinatra in that iconic role would have been very dif­fer­ent but it could have been inter­est­ing — he was mov­ing in that direc­tion with films like Tony Rome and The Detective.  However, the world had to wait until 1977 to see Ol’ Blue Eyes tackle the cop genre again — and when he did, it traf­ficked in Dirty Harry–styled themes of a flawed sys­tem and the temp­ta­tion to go out­side the law for justice.

Contract On Cherry Street was Sinatra’s return to act­ing, an epic made-for-television film pro­duced by his own com­pany and adapted from a novel by Philip Rosenberg.  In it, Sinatra plays Inspector Frank Hovannes, the head of an Organized Crime Unit for the NYPD.  He’s try­ing to nail a chop shop oper­ated by mob­sters but his tar­gets are clever and elu­sive — and the grind of deal­ing with glee­fully defi­ant hoods and pres­sure from the admin­is­tra­tion to deliver some­thing is becom­ing demor­al­iz­ing for Frank’s team, par­tic­u­larly the world-weary Captain Ernie Weinberg (Martin Balsam).

However, the hoods over­play their hand when they shoot down a mem­ber of Frank’s team dur­ing a raid.  The squad vow revenge and this leads them to plot an assas­si­na­tion of the mob­ster behind the chop shop.  The idea is turn the mob­sters against a rival out­fit led by a Jewish mob­ster, Waldman (Martin Gabel).  Unfortunately, Frank learns the hard way that vengeance has a rip­ple effect on both the tar­gets and his own men — and the revenge they take has tragic con­se­quences for all involved.

The result is not the kind of safe cops and rob­bers fare you might expect from an actor mak­ing a come­back.  Contract On Cherry Street has a pro­foundly noir-ish level of cyn­i­cism from the get-go, with Sinatra and his men try­ing to keep their heads above water as they deal with crooks who don’t have to play by any rules and supe­ri­ors who expect them to work mir­a­cles.  Once the cops open the Pandora’s Box of revenge, they slowly come to real­ize that as bad as things were before, there was at least a sense of bal­ance, how­ever pre­car­i­ous it might be.  Once blood is shed, it only leads to fur­ther blood­shed that can only be ended with a tremen­dous sacrifice.

These dark themes con­nect well thanks to a smart script from vet­eran screen­writer Edward Anhalt that down­plays action in favor of char­ac­ter study and never shies away from the cor­ro­sive con­se­quences of the cops’ law-defying actions.  Despite its made-for-t.v. sta­tus, Contract On Cherry Street also has a con­vinc­ing grit­ti­ness thanks to plenty of loca­tion shoot­ing that lends a con­vinc­ing back­drop to the film’s street­wise tone.  Director William Graham gives it all a gritty, French Connection–style vibe, lend­ing some kinetic verve to the film’s hand­ful of action set­pieces and cre­at­ing an appro­pri­ately tough yet melan­choly tone that fits the mate­r­ial perfectly.

Contract On Cherry Street cements its appeal by giv­ing Sinatra a superb sup­port­ing cast.  For exam­ple, con­sider the squad Sinatra leads up: not only does it have Balsam as his sec­ond in com­mand but it also includes Henry Silva, Harry Guardino and a young Michael Nouri.  They all acquit them­selves well but the ones who reg­is­ter most strongly are Balsam, who gets a great, bit­ter mono­logue early on about the plight of their Crime Unit and Guardino, who is the mem­ber of the team most adversely affected by their path of revenge.  On the crim­i­nal side of things, high­lights include an amus­ing sup­port­ing turn from Steve Inwood, who deploys all man­ner of Al Pacino-style tics as a ner­vous infor­mant, and a young Robert Davi as half of an ambi­tious brother team of hoods.

Finally, there is Sinatra him­self.  As you might expect, he has no prob­lem show­ing street­wise cool and act­ing tough: his repar­tee with Johnny Barnes in the first half of the film is a big high­light, with Barnes por­tray­ing a smart-aleck hood who engages in bat­tles of macho tem­pera­ment with Sinatra.  However, what really impresses is the sub­tlety with which he con­veys his character’s world-weariness.  You get a hint of this early on in his ban­ter with Balsam but it really pays off in a big way dur­ing the film’s final third.  The sad real­iza­tions he comes to dur­ing the third act pack a punch, yet they are deftly underplayed.

Simply put, Contract On Cherry Street is worth redis­cov­er­ing.  Whether you’re a fan of Ol’ Blue Eyes or just love gritty cop fare from the 1970’s, there’s plenty of wor­thy mate­r­ial for both camps here.