MR RICCO

US, 1975, 98 minutes, Colour.
Dean Martin, Eugene Roche, Thalmus Rasulala, Denise Nicholas, Cindy Williams, Geraldine Brooks, Philip Michael Thomas.
Directed by Paul Bogart.

Mr Ricco is a standard film from the mid-1970s, the material that one would find in many episodes of courtroom and police dramas on television. The film focuses on Joe Ricco (Dean Martin at his usual laidback style) as a San Francisco lawyer defending a young black man. However, he is also the target of an assassin.

San Francisco always looks good in this kind of film and there is a standard supporting cast of American character actors. It was directed by Paul Bogart who had a forty-year career in television and made the occasional film for cinema including Class of 44 and Torch Song Trilogy.

1. The quality of this film as a crime adventure? A minor crime adventure? A police thriller? The ingredients for popularity?

2. The excitement of the film, how taut was it, how slack in plot and resolution? The film as a Dean Martin vehicle and its consequences? success?

3. The authentic atmosphere of San Francisco and the way that it was used, Panavision and colour?

4. The character of Joe Ricco? How credible a person, Dean Martin's style and performance, qualities of character, ageing and tired, honest, caught within the letter of the law and the clash with public opinion? The way that he is liked by his staff and friends, his relationship with Katherine? His clash in his work with Cronyn? Held in suspicion by the blacks, by the police? Was he a credible character, able to be identified with? Sympathetic in his personality and his work and his attitudes?

5. The way that Joe Ricco was presented in his private life, the details of his family, especially his mother, his relationship with Katherine and the future that it held out?

6. How accurately presented was the black situation in San Francisco, racial pressures, the administration of justice, the loopholes of justice?

7. How interesting were the complex strands of the plot presented? As tied in with racial and legal issues?

8. The importance of the action sequences, as in the Church, the sense of danger for Ricco, the final action sequence at the reception?

9. How strongly drawn were the supporting characters, Frankie Steele, Irene Mapes? The police? Katherine?

10. The build-up to the reception, the mounting tension with the sniper, the deaths, especially Katherine's?

11. How expected was the final truth?

12. The value of this kind of social awareness thriller?