Fort Apache the Bronx

A tough-talking street melodrama, both shocking and sorrowful, acted by Paul Newman and a huge cast with the kind of conviction that can't be ignored. Read full review

While the movie has some good sequences, as a whole it never seems to come together - the pacing is all off. Read full review

The pace of the film is also on a low level, with episodic sequences rather than ones that build: more suitable to a television series than a feature film. But the accompanying low-keyed acting, mostly in the police parts of Newman, Ken Wahl and Edward Asner, lends the film a sustaining interest. [13 Feb 1981, p.17]

What they came out with is the most complete collection of cop-movie clichés since John Wayne played a Chicago cop in “McQ”. Read full review

Driving relentlessly to make points that are almost pointless, Fort Apache The Bronx is a very patchy picture, strong on dialog and acting and exceedingly weak on story. Read full review

The material strung together in a script about urban police work is so familiar from countless cop shows that it's difficult to see who needs this movie. Read full review

Edward Asner is good as the tough cop who takes over the besieged precinct, Aiello is appropriately sleazy, but Newman is still left to carry this rather predictable film wholly on his shoulders. The script is sharp and witty, but there's no central theme to hold it all together. Read full review

The film has many of the ingredients of a shocking, memorable movie, but it's shallow and earnest...It's a mess, with glimmerings of talent and with Newman's near-great performance.

Fort Apache, The Bronx, set primarily in a precinct house, is the S & M Barney Miller... One comes away from the film exhausted, both by the excess of incident in the script and by the reality in which the excess is so obviously grounded. [7 Feb 1981]

This would be acceptable, even powerful, if it were a genuinely tragic vision. But there's no true tragic sense here, not even the effective blend of entertainment and social perception of cop movies like "Serpico" and "The Onion Field." [16 Feb 1981, p.81]

At best, the filmmakers are guilty of wholesale confusion. For lamentable example, the plot degenerates into a hopeless tangle of loose threads and discarded hooks, beginning with the initial vicious teaser, which identifies Pam Grier as a drug-crazed prostitute who guns down a pair of unwary young patrolmen in their squad car. [7 Feb 1981, p.C1]