This gritty movie has always been a favorite of mine.
The movie was very real even if the story plot itself was fictionalized to some extent, the South Bronx was the worst hell-hole there was in the city, it resembled bombed out Beirut with tens of thousands of abandoned buildings the city couldn't tear down fast enough to keep up.
The buildings were used by violent street gangs and drug dealers, what wasn't burned down sat vacant and open. The streets were full of garbage, burned out stripped cars on milk crates with their wheels stripped off them, the depiction of the area in the movie was very accurate even if the people there protested the film and complained it wasn't an "accurate" portrayal of their neighborhood- I had been there back then, I know what I saw with my own eyes.
The police would literally only go around such a neighborhood several to a squad car because the crazy people aroudn there would throw bricks, concrete blocks and anything else out the windows or off the roof at them.
Newman's character started dating a young nurse, but she OD'd on some deliberately made bad drugs some dealer gave her to get rid of her, that part of the movie was full of tense drama and emotion.
Today, according to Google streetview the South Bronx looks almost nothing like it's former self, it did a 180 turnabout since the early 1980s.
Paul Newman stars as an essentially decent cop patrolling that decimated, drug-and-gang-ridden borough known on the city maps as the Bronx, but known to its denizens as "Fort Apache".
The buildings were used by violent street gangs and drug dealers, what wasn't burned down sat vacant and open. The streets were full of garbage, burned out stripped cars on milk crates with their wheels stripped off them, the depiction of the area in the movie was very accurate even if the people there protested the film and complained it wasn't an "accurate" portrayal of their neighborhood- I had been there back then, I know what I saw with my own eyes.
The police would literally only go around such a neighborhood several to a squad car because the crazy people aroudn there would throw bricks, concrete blocks and anything else out the windows or off the roof at them.
Newman's character started dating a young nurse, but she OD'd on some deliberately made bad drugs some dealer gave her to get rid of her, that part of the movie was full of tense drama and emotion.
Today, according to Google streetview the South Bronx looks almost nothing like it's former self, it did a 180 turnabout since the early 1980s.
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