Madigan

A film that marks a crossroads in Siegel's career. The methods of the two strongarm cops (Widmark and Guardino), given seventy-two hours to find a killer, invite comparisons with those of the two professional gunmen in Siegel's earlier The Killers. But the film also looks forward to Coogan's Bluff and Dirty Harry as the first to exploit the ambivalent enforcer/protector role of the police in society, with Fonda as the martinet police commissioner enforcing strict public morality while practising marital infidelity at home.