Five Spot: Best Fictitious Detectives
Posted: July 30th, 2009 | Author: CLS | Filed under: 5 Spot | Tags: Best Fictitious Detectives, Dirty Harry Callahan, Inspector Tequilla Yuen, Jimmy McNulty, Sherlock Holmes, The Bad Lieutenant | No Comments »
While I am not a wannabe law enforcement agent or an individual who blindly condones their more outrageous excesses – corruption, racial profiling, accidental shootings, etcetera – I do find great pleasure in certain fictitious sleuths who have gained eternal notoriety in the annals of literature, TV, and film over the course of recent memory.
If you do not understand how or why I find enjoyment in following their pursuits, then I highly recommend picking any one of the following five detectives to examine in closer detail through the body of work that has given them their due reputation.
5. The Bad Lieutenant
I am well aware that this the name of the gritty crime flick from Abel Ferrara circa 1992, but the individual I am referring to is the depraved anti-hero portrayed so poignantly by Harvey Keitel in the above motion picture. With next to no interest in actually solving any real crime in the heyday of David Dinkins, the Lieutenant (how Keitel is actually credited, there is no other name for his character in the entire movie) gallivants around the sordid city ingesting large amounts coke, freebasing in Spanish Harlem, jerking off on the bridge & tunnel crowd, and making ill-advised bets against the Darryl Strawberry led LA Dodgers of 1991. This is Ferrara’s greatest character ever, hands down.
4. Jimmy McNulty
The Wire was such a seminal series in regards to so many different topics due to the unparallel character development that took place over the course of five seasons. Apart from possibly Omar, Homicide Detective Jimmy McNulty is the most original personalities to emerge from this classic series. Possessing any uncanny knack for true police work, despite his raging alcoholism/satyriasis, Jimmy McNulty constantly plays a fine mediating influence between pathological street thugs and hustlers, and career-driven stat flunkies in the oft-reviled Baltimore Police Department in The Wire. He is the glue that holds the whole thing together.
