Exiled: A Law & Order Movie

All right, all right, I was ecstatic as the next L&O junkie when I heard that Chris Noth would reprise his role as Mike Logan. I looked forward to this movie for months, lying to every friend, family member, and creditor I have that I was absolutely, positively, unavailable that particular Sunday night. I even told my roommate that he was going to have to live without the X-Files for 1 week.

Mulder and Scully, you never looked so good.

It wasn't that this was a bad movie. It's that it took the easy way out in many cases, which is something Law and Order never does. It was a paint-by-numbers cop drama, and didn't try to be anything else.

I won't spoil the plot by pointing out the various pointless twists--let's just say that anyone with a nodding familiarity with the genre will see the ending a mile away. What really struck me was how hard the writers were trying to make this a "one-lone-cop-against-the-bureaucracy" story.

That might have worked with brand new characters, but we've all watched Mike Logan, Lennie Briscoe, Anita Van Buren, and Jack McCoy for years. We know how they're going to react to situations and to each other. Logan's difficulties with McCoy in this film are plausible--they were never all that friendly during their one year together. But his confrontation with Briscoe seems forced, and the mutual animosity with Van Buren is way out of left field. Logan risked his career for her at one point--over Briscoe's objections. So how exactly does she label him "self-absorbed"?

All in all, it left a bad taste in my mouth. The characters and the actors both deserved better.

It's possible that when Chris Noth did Exiled he might have had some hopes of making Mike Logan the lead character of another police detective series maybe based in Staten Island. Of course his motivation for making a thorough going investigation of a prostitute murder which I can tell you most cops anywhere let alone New York City wouldn't have given five seconds of attention to that kind of homicide, was to get back to New York. And no doubt he feels the work will get him back to Manhattan where the action is.

Anyway the Law And Order cast of 1998 all got into the made for TV film including Dann Florek working the organized crime division before going to sex crimes for Law And Order: Special Victims. Even Ice-T gets into this film playing a pimp who looks real good for the prostitute murder until he gets killed. This all being way before he became better known as Detective Finn Tutuola in Special Victims.

Noth is doing his commuter thing on his way to work in Staten Island when he notices a female body wash up where the ferry is docking. It's a homicide and he asks his supervisor Dabney Coleman for the case. Anything better than breaking up bar fights which they do a lot of on Staten Island. He even gets Detective Dana Eskelson to help him out.

Exiled is a nicely constructed film, maybe too nicely constructed. By coincidence the story takes us to his old precinct which brings in all the familiar Law And Order regulars. It also serendipitously does go back to Staten Island to a noted crime family with Don Tony Musante and his mutant son Costas Mandylor. And as it turns out Eskelson happens to know the family, she and Mandylor grew up together.

It could have been a pilot for another Law And Order spin off, but things didn't work out that way for Chris Noth. He had to wait several more years to get back to Manhattan in Law And Order: Criminal Intent. Noth is now retired from the NYPD, but I wouldn't be surprised if Mike Logan surfaces as a private eye in another film or TV series. Noth goes back to him like Yul Brynner went back to The King And I.

If you can buy all the coincidences Exiled is not a bad film and it sure has a built in audience with all the Law And Order fans.

I'm not sure how captivating this movie would be for those who didn't love Mike Logan from the first 5 years of "Law & Order". I *think* Chris Noth did a brilliant job conveying Mike's sense of loss, despair, and alienation, but then again, I've missed him sorely from the series. But, even without that background, "Exiled" is a tightly-written and well-acted police procedural, tracking between Staten Island (the scene of Mike's exile) and Manhattan (his lost and desired home), and through the stormy emotional terrain of Mike's mind. The case -- a murdered prostitute -- is far less important than the things it leads them to: a sociopathic mobster and a crooked cop in Mike's old precinct, and even those aren't quite as compelling as the battle Mike fights with his own obsessive desire to get back to his old way of life. In the end, that desire demands more than Mike could ever have dreamed... and the end of the film is painfully real. The Staten Island Ferry visually dominates the film, as is appropriate, as it symbolises Mike's in-between state. And the contrast between the suburban streets of Staten Island and the city (especially for those who remember the episode "God Bless the Child" and Mike's comments about small-town policing) were well done. In fact, the movie was filled with resonating triplets: Staten Island-the ferry-Manhattan; Cragen-Stopher-Van Buren (Mike's bosses); his three partners (past and present); the three women (the wife, the victim, the sister)... and these added to the depth. In short, this is far, far more than a long L&O episode.

For those of you who are offended that this movie insinuates nothing happens on Staten Island--get over it-nothing does. I'm a NYC paramedic and I know of what I speak. Chris Noth played this character very realistically. I think Dick Wolf made good use of a great character and an excellent actor. I would also like to give kudos to the 34th Avenue Bowl in my old neighborhood. Chris, why didn't you tell me? We could have hung out! Jeanine

just want to say a friend of mine gave me the website to profaci(john fiore 's new movie johnny slade's greatest hits. www.johnnyslade.net it brought back all the old feeling i had for the character

this movie and fiore in particular was a riot...its being released soon i hear. it reminded me of how good a character profaci was and what a shame it was to see him so dissed by the egomaniac NOTH...

when i watch things ,i root for the underdogs like profaci. i watch the smaller players and study them...like a lot of L&O freaks ,i dug the guy. with all the recycles..why hasn't wolf brought him back?

exiled was profaci's best and last moments on the show. here's to you profaci.. cheers