Sidewalk Fisherman

For a cop show, this is quite an achievement - a heart-warming bit of Americana, in which the police action is only peripheral. Genre fans whose taste has been corrupted by popularizers of cynicism (see: the cinema of Tarantino and other fakirs) need not apply.

Jay Novello, so familiar from his scores of well-executed small support roles, takes center stage and is completely believable as the prototypical little man -NY style. He fishes the grates, finding coins as his sole source of income, accompanied by an equally lovable pal Leonardo Cimino, known by everyone as "Shell Shock", and his goal in life is to adopt a little boy stuck at the foundling home run by nuns. His lifestyle is quaint, but decades later after the invention of recycling we have an underclass living off of discarded pop bottles, not all that different a signpost of persistent income inequality.

It's a sentimental story with a capital S, and writer Stirling Silliphant takes it and makes it (along with Jay's skill) quite powerful in the tradition of Americana cinema dating back to audience favorites like those animal films like "Old Yeller" and "The Yearling". Wholesome, inspirational cinema like this is completely out of style nowadays, but endearing to experience and putting McIntire and Franciscus way in the background for a week is no sin. I gave it my attention and was rewarded, even overlooking the contrived "token violence" climax in Jay's war with juvenile delinquents sharing his turf.