What looks like a mob hit in the very beginning involving Claude Akins ends up being something quite different as you get into the plot which takes a little bit to develop. It's only when retired police chief Melvyn Douglas comes on that everything is revealed, and you can really root for what they are doing, especially when he describes a situation involving a group of thugs and two young girls. A great cast of familiar actors including Robert Forster, Michelle Phillips, Mark Goddard, Bert Remsen and Dennis Patrick pad out the story of how the crime ridden cities are tied up with legal ramifications in dealing with obvious criminals that somehow get away with it.
Certainly taking the law into their own hands is not legal, and of course there are two sides to everything because the death squad finds itself being threatened with legal ramifications and the audience becomes torn over who is right and who is wrong. It's made very clear that the government considers the death squad, made up of their own insiders, as mob-like as organized criminals, so that becomes a conflict of interest.
The moment you see the ailing Melvyn Douglas and hear his confession, it becomes difficult to dispute the wrongdoing of this organization, and that makes for an interesting moral discussion. I haven't seen "Magnum Force" in years so I cannot compare the two, but it's an interesting question about Hollywood as to how to films on the same subject can come out so quickly without somehow a script being stolen somewhere. That itself is a metaphor for what is going on in this film and it shows that crime certainly runs rampant in every organization.
Certainly taking the law into their own hands is not legal, and of course there are two sides to everything because the death squad finds itself being threatened with legal ramifications and the audience becomes torn over who is right and who is wrong. It's made very clear that the government considers the death squad, made up of their own insiders, as mob-like as organized criminals, so that becomes a conflict of interest.
The moment you see the ailing Melvyn Douglas and hear his confession, it becomes difficult to dispute the wrongdoing of this organization, and that makes for an interesting moral discussion. I haven't seen "Magnum Force" in years so I cannot compare the two, but it's an interesting question about Hollywood as to how to films on the same subject can come out so quickly without somehow a script being stolen somewhere. That itself is a metaphor for what is going on in this film and it shows that crime certainly runs rampant in every organization.