This is the city... and only LAPD Sergeant Joe Friday and his newly appointed, cocky, streetwise partner, Pep Streebek can save it. Friday is a blue suited, by-the-rules cop who reluctantly joins forces with his footloose partner Streebek to rescue the City of Angels from the machinations of a power-mad Reverend and corrupt Police Commissioner...

Dragnet pays homage to the Dragnet media franchise, which originated as a radio drama in 1949, and has been adapted into several successful television shows and films. For this movie, Dan Aykroyd plays Joe Friday, the nephew and namesake of the original series star.

I haven't seen this movie since the '80s and in all honesty it hasn't aged all that well, with Aykroyd just playing the same sort of character - as he always tended to do - yet again. Hanks is his usual anarchic, rather innocent childlike persona, as he was familiar for at that time with movies like Big and Splash.

Extras are a little thin on the ground, with just a text based Production Notes, as well as text based Cast and Filmmaker's Biographies (both of which you'd have expected to find on the industries very first DVD releases), and a Theatrical Trailer. In the Blu-ray box there's also a pretty impressive and quite large double-sided fold-out poster with all new artwork created by Rich Davies.

Whilst the movie's plot attempts to slot into the Dragnet universe, it's subjective as to how well it manages to achieve that goal. Whilst I enjoyed revisiting the film, it's certainly not as entertaining as I remember and I doubt I'll be in a rush to revisit it any time soon.

6

Nick Smithson