Busting

Meet the long and short of L.A.’s vice squad.

Gum-chewing Keneely (Elliott Gould) is the lanky one. Ferrel (Robert Blake) is the short one…with a short fuse. They may not be the best cops in town. But they sure are the funniest.

Inside jokes and put-downs are a way of coping with the lurid underworld of vice. Yet humor doesn’t lessen the film’s forceful impact. “The picture,” explains co-producer Robert Chartoff, “is very much an examination of the relationship of the vice squad with the public and so-called criminals.

Justice wears a badge in Busting. So does injustice. Keneely and Farrel carry the biggest sticks in the neighborhood as long as they bust addicts and hookers. Go after the crime lord behind it all, however, and they’re stopped gold – by crooked cops on the kingpin’s payroll. Keneely and Farrel aren’t the type to blow the whistle on police corruption. Instead, they’ll do anything to blow it away.