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Measure for measure, Petrie's incompetence matches Gould's. As illustrated by The Betsy and Resurrection, Petrie is an equally mediocre talent. In Fort Apache he relies on pointless camera meanderings, a la Brian De Palma, to give the illusion of a consistent style. The frequent tracking, zooming, and panning--usually from Paul Newman's right profile to his left--generally serve no purpose.

Nor does pitiful Petrie get much help from his technical staff. John Alcott is a talented cinematographer, but, as Stanley Kubrick's favorite collaborator. Alcott has shown that he specializes in creating eerily sunny dream worlds where harsh lights and bright colors take on a chilling unreality. Alcott's style couldn't be more wrong for the South Bronx. When he does try to capture the ugliness of the locale, his photography becomes more grainy than gritty. And then, there's Rita Roland, from the Lizzie Borden School of Film Editing. Many times, she cuts away from a scene with a character in mid-gesture or midsentence; the annoying discontinuity from one shot to the next disorients the viewer and further debilitates the already feeble storyline.

IMAGINE TELEVISION'S Mr. Rogers playing Rocky Balboa and you should get an idea of what Paul Newman is like as J.J. Murphy. Miscasting like this should be savored in all its hilarity. When Newman looks into the camera and says "I've been a cop for seventeen years and I've got every minute of this job written on my face" or adds "I could walk into Grand Central Station and everybody would know I'm a cop," he's almost too funny to bear. Yes, Newman has taken a lot of critical abuse in his twenty-five years of stardom and deserved most of it. No one can play the devilish rogue or the impudent egotist better than Newman with his wry grin and the irresistable twinkle in his eye. But, Newman dwells under the curse of the Pretty Man. Remember Robert Redford as the prison warden in Brubaker? Newman's even less credible as a cop; he has "gentleman jock" written on his face and if you passed him in Grand Central you'd think he was a slick exec commuting from his Manhattan office to his small mansion in Darien.

Then again, Murphy is a poorly concieved, poorly written character. He's the Last Honest Cop, supposedly appalled by the corruption in the precinct and the squalor in the streets, an ancient cliche. Murphy might have been utilized as the liberal mouthpiece for the film-makers' ideas on urban blight--but Petrie and Gould blow it again. Murphy tells his Puerto Rican girlfriend that he stays in the Bronx because he wants to help the victimized citizenry, he says he understands them: "You see Puerto Ricans are really no different from us Irish. We both like to dance and drink and make love." Great; ethnic stereotypes lead to better cultural relations.

Newman's at his very worst, though, when the film comes to its tragic, anti-climactic ending, wherein fate's final cruel blow devastates Murphy. Newman staggers, he pounds on furniture, his face scrunches up and turns red--he's in pain. He's trying hard, but he just can't do it, Newman can't cry on camera. He finally turns his back to the camera, bangs his head against the wall and fakes some pathetic sobs.

The rest of the cast fares better, though their performances display little more than simple competence. Particularly good are Wahl who brings an authentic Brooklyn charm to Corelli and Rachel Ticotin who, as Isabella, manages to survive several of Gould's most abysmal lines.

EDWARD ASNER, though, as the tight-assed commander Connolly delivers the film's muddled message in Fort Apache's penultimate scene. Asner, a talented, politically active performer, plays this role with conviction and, like the film-makers, probably thought the movie would come off sounding like a humane plea to America to save the South Bronx. Asner's convictions and intentions make his scene with Newman--where Connolly tries to persuade Murphy not to leave the force--all the more ironic. "The precinct must be a house of law," Asner says passionately. "Damn it, there're people out there who are trying to build something and we have to let them know that the law is here to serve them."

The problem is that we haven't seen any of those people trying to build something and that's the key to understanding Fort Apache's Quandary. For two hours the South Bronx's inhabitants have been presented as pimps, hookers, junkies, dealers, theives, and killers--all of them either Black or Puerto Rican. And American audiences will not see victims of an inhumane racist capitalist system--they will see looters and murderers who should be, in the view of this film, punished. When the neighborhood is in an uproar over random arrests, Murphy tells us that the community leaders will demand justice. But what we see is a mob of hundreds of rioters, screaming and throwing garbage. There are three Black cops in the film: one is one of the rookies knocked off in the first scene; the second is a jovial fellow with about three forgettable lines; the third shoves hero Murphy and calls him a "piece of shit." There are no Puerto Rican police officers in the film. This absence of heroic--or even respectable--minority characters, while not inherently wrong, weakens the film and caused a huge, and still growing, controversy. Fort Apache is not a deliberately mean-spirited and racist film; it is the product of people who lacked the insight and sensitivity to create a strong, fair movie.

The Deer Hunter turned in a healthy profit and won the New York Film Critics Award and the Oscar as Best Picture of the Year. But the Quandary aside, Fort Apache, despite its emotional jerry-rigging, stands as a silly sham and a dismal artistic failure.