‘The Thin Blue Lie,’ a Blemish on Philly Cops and Showtime

This is turning out to be a bad year for the image of police.

Foremost is the ongoing Rampart scandal still blackening the reputation of the Los Angeles Police Department as it operates under a media glare while readying a response to expected demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention. And now comes, also, a badly blemished Showtime movie recalling a newspaper expose of systematic cop brutality and corruption in Philadelphia in the mid-1970s when coarse, autocratic, race-baiting Frank Rizzo, a former police chief himself, was mayor.

In 1979, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Rizzo and other top city officials, claiming they fostered a climate that led to police viciousness. The suit was dismissed for procedural reasons.

At its best, “The Thin Blue Lie” is a suspenseful reminder of how bad things can get for a city when police go bad. In this case, some are accused of murder and shown gunning down the innocent and savagely beating confessions from suspects, reflecting the yearly 1,200 citizen complaints that were filed against the police under Rizzo’s watch. When a murder suspect in the movie protests to his cop inquisitors that they are violating his rights by denying him a call to an attorney, he’s told: “The only rights you get in here is a right fist.” Which is immediately delivered to his chin.

Daniel Helfgott’s curious teleplay is essentially about crusading reporter Jonathan Neumann’s exposure of this raging police misconduct, with assistance from his colleague Phil Chadway, in a series of articles that earned a Pulitzer Prize.

The much-honored Neumann (Rob Morrow) is lionized here as a superhero who is somehow the only reporter in Philadelphia who sees that the police are out of control, and also the only one with the guts to do something about it. In this account directed by Roger Young, he’s surrounded by incompetence, including shortsighted editors and a nudnik female colleague who insists, “Detectives don’t beat suspects!” Even Chadway (Randy Quaid) is an oaf who has to be steered into the story by Neumann as one would guide a poodle on a leash.

Just how close this is to the real Neumann and Chadway is subject to question. The Philadelphia Inquirer, for which they worked at the time, is renamed the Examiner in the script, odd for a movie purporting to be factual. “It was a clearance issue,” said a Showtime spokeswoman.

There are sequences here that stretch credibility, such as police repeatedly terrorizing Neumann, in one instance abducting him and bringing him to a cemetery where they throw him into an open grave. If these things really happened, the script should explain how the cops could get away with them and why Neumann didn’t write about them in the paper.

The movie’s true idiot scene, though, comes at night when Chadway approaches detectives parked outside the apartment building where Neumann is inside writing his expose of them. Chadway shrewdly tells these enraged cops who he knows are ruthless and violent: “My partner, he’s up there writing it all down, and it’s gonna be on the front page . . . and there’s nothing you can do to stop us.” Then he walks away, leaving Neumann inside alone and at the cops’ mercy.

For more than one reason, apparently, this movie is titled “The Thin Blue Lie.”

* “The Thin Blue Lie” can be seen Sunday night at 8 on Showtime. The network has rated it TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14).