Friday Film: Brannigan
Most of us are familiar with John Wayne, the film actor and American icon who epitomized rugged masculinity. He was closely associated with Westerns and war movies, but he stepped away from those standards in 1975 with Brannigan.
| Brannigan (1975) | |
| Directed by: | Douglas Hickox |
| Produced by: | Arthur Garnder Jules Levy |
| Starring: | John Wayne Richard Attenborough Judy Geeson Mel Ferrer John Vernon Ralph Meeker Daniel Pilon |
| Distributed by: | United Artists |
| All Movie Guide IMDb Amazon.com |
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John Wayne had turned down the title role in Dirty Harry, which went to Clint Eastwood. But after seeing the success of that film, Wayne decided to give gritty police thrillers a try. Brannigan casts “the Duke” as Detective Jim Brannigan, an Irish-American detective from Chicago who is sent to London to chase down American gangster Ben Larkin. After several culture clashes, Brannigan teams up with Commander Swann (Richard Attenborough) to help him find his target. However, the detective doesn’t care for London’s restrained style of policing and uses his own “Chicago-style” techniques.
Despite its notable action scenes, the film was not particularly successful. However, it was one of very few movies filmed in Chicago at this time. After the 1968 Democratic convention, Mayor Richard J.Daley didn’t care for the way the city was being portrayed by the media, so he prohibited movies from being filmed in Chicago. However, he did allow director Douglas Hickox to shoot the opening scenes of Brannigan here because he considered John Wayne “a good American.”
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