Thin blue line "How many crimes did you commit while you were an NYPD officer?" asks a grand jury member, who sits with his lawyer in the dock. The man hesitates and finally responds, knowing full well that if all this were happening in the movies, his answer would make the audience roar with amazement. “Hundreds” – the man speaks quietly but confidently, breaking the silence. That man was police officer Michael Dowd, who served in New York's infamous seventy-fifth precinct, which in the nineties became known as the place where the dirtiest cops in the city's history worked. The scandal, which has been brewing since the eighties, erupted when it was revealed that hundreds of police officers, most of whom served in stations located near each other, were corrupt and served not the residents of the city, but bandits. The NYPD veterans are well aware of this story, but the rest of the world has remained in the dark. Documentary filmmaker Tiller Russell decided that this real story, which could well happen in the world of Scorsese gangster films, should be told and set to work long and dangerously to find all the participants in the madness that was happening in the seventy-fifth precinct in the eighties and nineties. About this period, during which Tiller Russell was engaged in search and work with sources, it would be possible to write a book - the director had to play spy, do the work of a private detective and communicate with drug lords. The result of this long and incredibly dangerous journey was the documentary Seventy-fifth, capturing a tornado of death, drugs and corruption that caught New York in the seventies, eighties and nineties.
“Seventy-fifth” is a rare example of a non-fiction film in noir style, which is not inferior to artistic thrillers for creating a suspense atmosphere and the uniqueness of visual solutions. Remember how you froze when you watched Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line or shivered as you approached the denouement of the Paradise Lost trilogy. The same emotions you can get traveling around the world, which for you created the main characters of the film “Seventy-fifth”, trying to convey as accurately as possible what they once witnessed. But in this picture, the story is told not only by people – at the beginning you can see pictures of the dysfunctional areas of New York at that time, with houses destroyed, as if after the war, and rare people who were “lucky” to live there, then the baton is taken up by goosebump-causing photos from numerous crime scenes, and finally you can see old surveillance recordings that will make you feel like a full participant in long past events. In the film “Seventy-fifth” with the viewer are a dialogue and the main characters, many of whom were very talented storytellers and with small hints of the Director were able to tell this complex but exciting story, and the visual part of the film, which includes photos, videos and reconstruction of events. Despite the fact that everything happened decades ago, the characters still remember that crazy period in their lives as if it happened yesterday, and the moments captured on film help give their memories a more vivid form. The atmosphere created in the picture can be described as a police siren, from time to time suddenly cutting through the darkness of the night, and personifying the war, invisible to many, waged between the police and players.
"Seventy-fifth" is what the characters in James Elroy's novels might have been if they had actually existed, or what the television series "The Shield" would have been if it hadn't been fiction. Like any talented filmmaker, documentary filmmaker Tiller Russell tries to remain faithful to his characters who have entrusted him with their past and memories, as well as fulfill his duty to the truth and the viewer who would like the director to remain subjective in his research. “Seventy-Five” tells the story of people who almost literally danced to bullets flying off the ground, broke many laws and dealt with the most dangerous characters in the city, but still they remained human. Tiller Russell did not want to dehumanize his heroes, but at the same time was able to separate truth from lies and condemn many of their actions. When a grand jury member asked Michael Dowd whether he thought he was a police officer or a drug kingpin, Dowd said he was both. Seventy-fifth is built on these contradictions, two entities living together in one person. It is a tale of drugs, bribes and deaths, and a tale of friendship and partnership and a love of policing. This film is worth watching and if you don’t know anything about the world of dirty cops and would like to know what laws these people live by, and if you know it well, but want more, because only a very good fictional story from gangster movies can compare with what actually happened and what you were given the opportunity to watch the creators of the film “Seventy-fifth”.