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Moreover, in what is the briefest of moments towards the end of the final reel, race relations in the Big Apple circa 1967 are put directly under the spotlight when an on-screen misunderstanding ends up being as strangely comic as it is sadly believable.Īpproaching the story as if tackling a disaster movie, Peerce and Baehr – during an extremely effective piece of tense and violent pre-credits exposition – quickly identify the approaching storm, this coming in the form of Joe Ferrone ( Tony Musante) and Artie Connors ( Martin Sheen), a couple of young hoodlums who terrorise a Bronx pool hall owner ( Marty Meyers) and brutally mug a passer-by ( Ben Levi) before deciding they want to carry on in Times Square.įollowing this powerful little opening, the director and writer then use the standard melodramatic ploy of introducing the rest of the mostly-burdened characters two by two, a plot mechanism which reveals where their individual head spaces are at just before being confronted by the thuggish pair. Nevertheless, some stinging racial abuse is present in the narrative mix, making up just a part of the overall unpleasantness which permeates this black and white film about a small group of New Yorkers being terrorised by a pair of vicious thugs during a late night-early morning rail commute from the Bronx to Grand Central Station-42 nd St. Not that this claustrophobic, low budget, tension-filled ensemble piece is preoccupied with racism because, in the scheme of things, the plot’s racist elements are on a fairly level playing field with many of the other societal woes touched upon by Nicholas Baehr’s in-your-face script. Those with lingering doubts about the veracity of the Black Lives Matter movement should perhaps watch Larry Peerce’s uncomfortable 1967 urban melodrama The Incident before passing any further judgment.