Review of Brannigan (1975) by Dawdlingpoet — 26 Nov 2021

I quite enjoyed this film. It has the feel of a 1970s police crime drama TV show, only with a longer running time (1h 50). There are some good scenes of well choreographed bar (or should I say pub) fights and decent car chase scenes and there's a decent amount of comedy/humour too, with some witty pieces of dialogue, such as at the aftermath of said bar fight, when one of the witnesses sighs and exclaims 'im only here for the beer!', while the owner of a new car, finding himself suddenly a passenger with John Wayne's titular character, Brannigan, having taken the wheel, says 'I waited a year for delivery' as the car is put in harms way, shall I say. I won't provide any more in the way of spoilers, as I hate spoilers but hopefully that gives you a brief idea of some of the more amusing moments, script wise.

I liked the English police officers reaction to Lt. Brannigan being on the scene, the Americans views on the Brits and the Brits having a go at him - it reminded me a little of the recent ITV crime series 'Wild Bill', in which an American police officer ends up being based in rural England. Of course one of the main aspects of this film is that Johny Wayne is in the main role and I thought he did well at portraying the perhaps more gritty police officer, who doesn't take too kindly to people in London giving their negative opinions on the way he does things and so on.

I found this quite an engrossing and generally enjoyable watch. There were one or two scenes with semi-elaborate set ups and it all seemed to work quite well - I won't go into details, so as not to provide any spoilers as mentioned earlier but all in all, I found this an entertaining and sometimes amusing watch, which I'd recommend to others.