Madigan

1968

1 hr. 41 min.

Crime

Drama

List

75%

12 Reviews

Tomatometer

49%

1,000+ Ratings

Audience Score

Police Det. Daniel Madigan (Richard Widmark) and his partner have lost their firearms. A suspected murderer made off with them during a scuffle. Now Police Commissioner Anthony Russell (Henry Fonda) has ordered the men to get their pistols back within 72 hours -- or else. And if that weren't enough, Russell has to deal with disturbing evidence of police corruption surrounding an old friend, accusations of police brutality from a minister and the departure of his longtime mistress.

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Bob C

great cop NYC movie. Being Brooklyner i loved the NYC background for gritty well-acted detective movie. Widmark excellent as usual.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

12/17/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Mostly satisfying and somewhat gritty police procedural from Don Siegel that's a little too stuck in the land of wooden, late 60s cop dramas.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/01/23

Full Review

ashley h

Madigan is a decent film. It is about New York detectives Madigan and Bonaro who are given 72 hours by their superior to capture a hoodlum wanted for homicide in Brooklyn. Richard Widmark and Henry Fonda give good performances. The screenplay is a little slow in places. Don Siegel did an alright job directing this movie. I liked this motion picture because of the drama and mystery.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Directed by Don Siegel who had a foot firmly planted in classic Hollywood and who was also a trailblazer in modernizing American action films, "Madigan" serves the perfect bridge between the two. Co-written by Abraham Polonsky, who'd previously been on the Hollywood Blacklist for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, the film follows two different NYPD police officers. One is Madigan, a tough no-nonsense detective played by Richard Widmark trying to catch a killer, and the other is the straight-arrow police commissioner, Henry Fonda, who's balancing justice, politics, and an extra-marital affair. The film was based on a book titled "The Commissioner" and Fonda's character was the original focus of the story, but the producers instead changed the focus to Widmark's Madigan character, so the film unfortunately ends up a an odd combination of two different stories. Both Fonda and Widmark's stories involve them having to balance their work-life and home-life, but neither of those story elements seemed all that interesting. The most interesting part of the story concerned Widmark and his partner, Harry Guardino, on the trail of criminal Steve Ihnat. Watching Widmark and Guardino push the boundaries of acceptable law enforcement in their investigation makes this film an interesting bridge to director Don Siegel's controversial and highly influential vigilante cop film "Dirty Harry" he'd make a few years later. Siegel also makes great use of NYC locations that give ether film added grit and realism, much like we'd later see in William Friedkin's "The French Connection" and Siegel's use of San Francisco in "Dirty Harry." Siegel also skillfully demonstrates his own directional action sequences chops with a memorable showdown in the film's finale, which features with three characters in tight quarters, all with John Woo-style double-fisted pistols in each hand. Overall, "Madigan" features an old style police detective story (with a nice plot nod to Kurosawa's "Stray Dog") that abandons the stylistic German Expressionist roots of American film noir and instead takes the genre into new more realistic and gritty of territory, even if those stronger elements get somewhat undone by dull and unoriginal subplots involving the marital lives of Madigan and the commissioner.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

01/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Based on a book centering on a week in a police commissioner's compartmentalized life, this film focuses more on the results oriented detective whom the commissioner wishes was in some other city's payroll. All this in spite of Fonda being signed as the leading role, which after shooting & editing became Widmark. Directors prerogative. Because of the grittiness & violence, this could almost be considered a white-man's Shaft.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

01/25/23

Full Review

scott m

Some of the cinematography of New York City is good. But that's the only thing. The rest of this movie is awful. I'm amazed because I'm a huge fan of Don Siegel's.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

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Don Siegel

Director

Richard Widmark

Det. Daniel Madigan

Henry Fonda

Commissioner Anthony X. Russell

Harry Guardino

Det. Rocco Bonaro

Inger Stevens

Actor

James Whitmore

Actor

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Roger Ebert

Chicago Sun-Times

Rated: 3/4

Oct 23, 2004

Full Review

Christian Jones

Starburst

The scenes scored to action sound more like the theme to a late-night talk show, and the romantic scenes are so bombastically saccharine that they practically scream, “Listen to the sweeping strings, the swell of the orchestra, this is romance!”

Rated: 2/5

Sep 16, 2022

Full Review

R.H. Gardner

Baltimore Sun

This notion that an instrument need not necessarily be perfect to perform properly is, perhaps, a valid one, but, if so, it's the only thing that is in Madigan, which is executed on the level of a TV soap opera.

Sep 15, 2022

Full Review

Nicholas Bell

IONCINEMA.com

Siegel aims for a documentary style with Widmark as Madigan, but the film and its provocative politics are steeped in the essence of the swinging 60s and falter considerably in its achievements when compared to other period films.

Rated: 2/5

Aug 11, 2020

Full Review

Matt Brunson

Film Frenzy

Gritty and low-key.

Rated: 3/4

Nov 17, 2019

Full Review

Manny Farber

Artforum

The real juice of the films is their ranginess, that they give you a lot, the zest for what a city contains, and the flatness. These movies work partly because they are exploiting the fairly unplumbed field of pessimistic observing rather than action.

Jun 18, 2019

Full Review

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Synopsis

Police Det. Daniel Madigan (Richard Widmark) and his partner have lost their firearms. A suspected murderer made off with them during a scuffle. Now Police Commissioner Anthony Russell (Henry Fonda) has ordered the men to get their pistols back within 72 hours -- or else. And if that weren't enough, Russell has to deal with disturbing evidence of police corruption surrounding an old friend, accusations of police brutality from a minister and the departure of his longtime mistress.

Director: Don Siegel
Production Co: Universal Pictures
Genre: Crime, Drama
Original Language: English
Release Date (DVD): Apr 1, 2003