text: Burt Reynolds' riposte to Clint Eastwood encroaching on his redneck comedy turf with his orangutan comedies was to make his own Dirty Harry in Chicago-style thriller, Sharky's Machine. Originally intended for John Boorman but in the end directed by the star himself, it's an out-and-out commercial package with Reynolds a narc who gets busted down to the Vice Squad (literally - they're in the basement) who sets out to nail a mysterious crime lord who is backing Earl Holliman as the next governor. You can guess the rest, but while Reynolds tends to lose sight of the story at times he has a good eye for individual scenes and almost gets a performance out of Rachel ward as the high-class hooker he falls for. The romantic subplot is unusually well developed, there are a couple of good action scenes and some nice touches, such as having Vittorio Gassman's lookalike villain a mirror image of the hero or Reynolds and a killer both staking out a witness from adjacent apartments in the same building. One of the star's better films from his glory days, it's no classic but it makes for a more than efficient Saturday night special.