If you enjoy watching unrepentant psychopathic "cops" have a giggle over the horrendous crimes they committed while working as uniformed NYC police officers, this documentary will be right up your alley. The main subject of the film, Michael Dowd, has a blast recounting his sordid adventures for the camera, and the interviewer never gets in the way of the fun by asking a probing question. The great documentarians manage to either confront their subjects, or coax them into revealing themselves. The director of this lame excuse for a film does neither. He just lets the idiots talk about their brilliant exploits — ripping off robbery victims and drug dealers alike, and eventually hiring out to drug kingpins to protect their territories. Ultimately, Dowd actually becomes a drug dealer and kidnapper, turning his victims over to the drug cartels. As superficial as it is, I have to say that this documentary is also watchable, and delivers a couple of unintentional insights: the first is that virtually all the cops interviewed in this film seem to abide by the same code as criminals do: never rat on a fellow cop. The other is the single bit of sorrow that Dowd evinces late in the film: it's over the fact that his longtime partner (a tattooed goofball with the brains of a bivalve) eventually "rolled over" on him and wore a wire for the internal affairs investigators who put Dowd away for 12 years. Dowd's tears at the recollection of this betrayal are hysterically funny, and worth the pain and suffering of sitting through this badly paced, badly shot, badly cut film.
Review of The Seven Five
