Dragnet (1987)   Starring: Dan Aykroyd, Tom Hanks and Christopher Plummer Distributor: Fabulous Films Ltd / Fremantle Media Enterprises RRP: £14.99 Certificate: PG Release Date: 15 February 2016

When the ultra-straight laced police detective, Joe Friday loses another partner he is reluctantly paired with loose cannon, Pep Streebek. The two are set against the PAGAN’s, a seemingly anarchic terror group who have stolen porn mags from porn king pin, Jerry Caesar. Seemingly the Reverend Jonathan Whirley is morally against Caesar’s business, but the alliances and dangers are far more complicated for the two detectives in the City of Angels...

Dragnet (1987. 1 hr, 41 min, 37 sec) is a comedy film directed by Tom Mankiewicz, who wrote the screenplay, for amongst other things, three James Bond films, including the excellent Diamonds are Forever (1971). The screenplay was provided by Dan Aykroyd, Mankiewicz and Alan Zweibel.

The film was part pastiche and part homage to the show of the same name which was popular in the fifties and sixties. One of the connections between the two is that Joe is supposed to be related to the detective in the original show.

Joe is a bit of a fish out of water, even for this film, his straight laced approach to life may well mimic his more famous ancestor, but this just leaves him behaving decidedly odd. Of course, the Tom Hanks character is a bit more freewheeling, were not really talking Serpico here, you could still take Streebek home to meet your mum and as he is Tom Hanks she will love him forever.

At this point what the film needed was a strong script on which to hang the odd couple gig on. What it got was a series of events, loosely connected to Christopher Plummer (Reverend Jonathan Whirley) phoning in a performance and porn king, Jerry Caesar (Dabney Coleman), which involved the kidnap of the virgin, Connie Swail (Alexandra Paul).

It’s not that the film isn’t an affectionate nod to the original or that the cast is lacking in talent, but this is another film which suffers from trying to be continuously clever, when what the audience actually want are the jokes. At best the film is amusing with the odd breakout moment. Had the plot been better then the film had all the markings of being a classic, especially Aykroyd’s Joe Friday, who spends the whole film doing a homage to Jack Webb’, Sgt. Joe Friday. To connect the two it is nice to see Harry Morgan reprise his role from the original show as a suitable promoted, Captain Bill Gannon.

There are extras, static as they are for the most part. You get the Production Notes, consisting of five and a half pages of text, which given its length does not go into any great depth. You also get bios for the six most prominent actors and the director, although I doubt there are many people on the planet who don’t know who Tom Hanks is. Lastly the disc contains the original Theatrical Trailer (1 min, 29 sec), which has not been restored.

Like most comedy films, this is going to come down to personal taste, for myself I felt the weak script hobbled the actors and turned what could have been a classic into another clever, but ultimately only amusing, comedy film.

6

Charles Packer