A narcotics squad Detective gets the gift of graft to the tune of ten grand, so he trades the wad of green for two slugs of hot lead. Joseph Pevney blocks and paces this noir efficiently which allows the DP Carl Guthrie free reign in his low angle, deep focus compositions (which often use mirrored two shot conversations), and lights with tense use of low key.
Det. Miller (Regis Toomey) is a career cop whose debt now outweighs his income, so he takes a bribe to look the other way when a shipment of some unnamed drugs (heroin) leaves the Big Apple for the City of Angels. Turns out, his debt was accrued in order to send his daughter Christine (Alexis Smith) to college, but she has since joined the police force, as opposed to some office job in a big law firm. Now, his daughter vows to bring the man who murdered her father to Justice, using jujitsu, her feminine intuition, and her father’s service revolver (the one he was fucking murder with!) to accomplish the task...with extreme prejudice. She’ll have to battle her fiancé’s patronizing attitudes, junkies, a corrupt Doctor, a hulking hit man in a steel neck-brace, her cohort’s bellicose affections, before facing her target femme-a-mano.
This is a surprisingly brutal film in its portrayal of casual violence. The film begins with a man trapped in a pedestrian tunnel by three thugs, one wearing a steel neck-brace (ala Peter Lorre in MAD LOVE). This is filmed in deep shadow and cut to low angle close-ups basked in low key lighting, which ends with an over-the-shoulder shot of the killer stabbing the victim multiple times. The only word the killer mutters is “stoolie”. Minutes later, as the unnamed victim lies dying, a Detective hovers over him trying to hear his last breath as he gasps the name of a corrupt NYC detective who’s in on the racket. What an opening sequence! Other things to note: We get Royal Dano as a low-level junkie whose aspirations lead him to aspirate for the final time, a sad-sack drunken woman who plunges to her death, a cop murdered at point blank range with his own revolver, a gunfight in an old dark house, but more importantly a feminist action film that is mostly from our protagonist’s perspective. Her square-jawed partner Lt. Trent (Scott Brady) may be stuck with contemporary patriarchal values, but he soon begins treating her as an equal and valuing her initiative. Though it builds a love interest between the two in the final reel, it doesn’t descend into melodrama. The last lines sell the story short as the music swells towards a conjoining of emotions, but it still doesn’t diminish her accomplishments.
The title is condescending by reducing the protagonist, a strong willed, determined and intelligent woman to a childish caricature, as if she is nothing more than her sex. If the story were about Lt. Trent, I’m sure this wouldn’t be called UNDERCOVER BOY. I posit that a better title would have been UNDERCOVER HEROINE, as it describes her strident demeanor and alludes to the specific narcotic being secreted.
Final Grade: B+
