After low level hood Miller Starkie is murdered by fellow hood Max Troy (Stacy Harris), Sergeant Joe Friday (Jack Webb) and his partner Officer Frank Smith (Ben Alexander) pursue an investigation to find out who killed Starkie.
Dragnet is a 1954 feature film adaptation of the franchise of the same name created by Jack Webb that originally began life as a radio series in 1949 with its presence expanded by Jack Webb with two TV series in which he had direct involvement as well as two subsequent TV series done by other parties after Webb's death. At the time when Warner Bros. Announced a feature adaptation of Dragnet, the show was at its peak as the number 2 most popular show on the airwaves and laid the groundwork for the TV staple of police procedurals where characters would tackle a "case of the week" usually ripped from real events causing a slew of imitators as well as a formula that continues to be a staple of broadcast TV to this day. While Dragnet is an influential show with a well-earned stop in TV history, I'm not really a fan of this franchise which mostly comes down to the self righteous sermonizing of the Joe Friday character and the show's overly whitewashed look at law and order with a black and white dichotomy (hence why my favorite part of the canon is the Dan Aykroyd/Tom Hanks film that spoofed this series). While I understand the series has its devotees I'm not among them, but I don't hold that against the movie because the movie itself is a different and considerably uglier beast than the series.
Starting off with the production itself, this film version of Dragnet looks and feels essentially like a bigger budgeted version of the TV series complete with Friday's trademark terse narration with the only real differences between it and the show being some more locations, cast members, and a bit more violence than could be shown on the television at the time. In terms of production it feels very economical and aside from the opening murder and being filmed in color it's more or less in line with what you got from the show of the time. In a departure from the format of the show the film comes out and shows us Max Troy committing the murder in an inverted detective story format, while the inverted detective story is a great way to showcase a cat-and-mouse type game of wits, Dragnet suffers from having our adversaries be a not all that interesting hood and Webb's archetypical Friday who's positioned as a bland paragon of virtue but his actions throughout the film say otherwise. Over the course of the film we see Friday lament "the law only protects the guilty", brazenly insult a scared witness who's in fear of his life for testifying, and in the third act engage in some morally dubious actions where they harass Max Troy at every turn. As another review pointed out, this is probably why they chose to invert this story because it gets the audience and Friday's side by "knowing he did it", and there's no real consequences for Friday and Smith's flagrant abuse of power with the movie seemingly inviting the officer to laugh at it.
On a personal note if you must see a film version of Dragnet, watch the Dan Aykroyd/Tom Hanks film. If you want to see "actual" dragnet watch either the 60s revival series or what episodes you can find of the original 50s run. Dragnet 1954 is just unpleasant in what it does that the TV show didn't and while I can't speak to how well it did, given that people who like Dragnet don't seem fond of this film seems to speak volumes as to why it's the only one.
Dragnet is a 1954 feature film adaptation of the franchise of the same name created by Jack Webb that originally began life as a radio series in 1949 with its presence expanded by Jack Webb with two TV series in which he had direct involvement as well as two subsequent TV series done by other parties after Webb's death. At the time when Warner Bros. Announced a feature adaptation of Dragnet, the show was at its peak as the number 2 most popular show on the airwaves and laid the groundwork for the TV staple of police procedurals where characters would tackle a "case of the week" usually ripped from real events causing a slew of imitators as well as a formula that continues to be a staple of broadcast TV to this day. While Dragnet is an influential show with a well-earned stop in TV history, I'm not really a fan of this franchise which mostly comes down to the self righteous sermonizing of the Joe Friday character and the show's overly whitewashed look at law and order with a black and white dichotomy (hence why my favorite part of the canon is the Dan Aykroyd/Tom Hanks film that spoofed this series). While I understand the series has its devotees I'm not among them, but I don't hold that against the movie because the movie itself is a different and considerably uglier beast than the series.
Starting off with the production itself, this film version of Dragnet looks and feels essentially like a bigger budgeted version of the TV series complete with Friday's trademark terse narration with the only real differences between it and the show being some more locations, cast members, and a bit more violence than could be shown on the television at the time. In terms of production it feels very economical and aside from the opening murder and being filmed in color it's more or less in line with what you got from the show of the time. In a departure from the format of the show the film comes out and shows us Max Troy committing the murder in an inverted detective story format, while the inverted detective story is a great way to showcase a cat-and-mouse type game of wits, Dragnet suffers from having our adversaries be a not all that interesting hood and Webb's archetypical Friday who's positioned as a bland paragon of virtue but his actions throughout the film say otherwise. Over the course of the film we see Friday lament "the law only protects the guilty", brazenly insult a scared witness who's in fear of his life for testifying, and in the third act engage in some morally dubious actions where they harass Max Troy at every turn. As another review pointed out, this is probably why they chose to invert this story because it gets the audience and Friday's side by "knowing he did it", and there's no real consequences for Friday and Smith's flagrant abuse of power with the movie seemingly inviting the officer to laugh at it.
On a personal note if you must see a film version of Dragnet, watch the Dan Aykroyd/Tom Hanks film. If you want to see "actual" dragnet watch either the 60s revival series or what episodes you can find of the original 50s run. Dragnet 1954 is just unpleasant in what it does that the TV show didn't and while I can't speak to how well it did, given that people who like Dragnet don't seem fond of this film seems to speak volumes as to why it's the only one.