When the men were arrested with the boxes of money,exactly what laws were they
breaking? If it was counterfeting shouldn't that be a federal arrest by the
treasury dept? Many thanks to anyone who can help!!
Thank You
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After the chase, this is the best realized scene in the film (the car wash scenes are cool too). Kind of a twist on THE FRENCH CONNECTION where the first undercover operation was the cops disguised as Santa and a hot dog vendor in a slummy neighborhood; here Scheider disguises himself as an upscale businessman on Madison Ave. In a film that's kind of ponderous in the editing department, this scene contains some real suspense, and shows criminal activity behind doors that would seem beyond reproach.
The fact that they're tracking down counterfeiters doesn't work for me either. The Seven-Ups are supposed to be an independent squad operating within the NYPD. But counterfeiting comes under federal jurisdiction. If they had stumbled upon fake money while investigating crimes subscribed under the New York State Penal Code OK, but I don't think this is plausible as portrayed. I have a feeling the screenwriter might've initially suggested the antique store dealer should be a drug dealer, which would have been more in keeping with the real events of the day, and the type of crime the police unit might've investigated (there were a number of flower shops that were used as fronts for heroin activity); but perhaps to keep the story independent of THE FRENCH CONNECTION, somebody suggested they make the contraband counterfeit money instead of drugs.
Don't know why they would want to make the McGuffin counterfeit money. Sonny Grosso and other real life police officers worked intimately with the filmmakers, and narcotics was their field. To go a more fictional route is a bit puzzling.
The narrative exposition in this film was weak -- I thought the beginning of the film was borderline incoherent so what was going on didn't seem very clear.
While the antiques dealers had counterfeit money I wonder if Buddy had hard evidence of what exactly they were doing. It almost felt like he didn't know what exactly was up other than some illicit delivery was taking place. Vito seemed kind of surprised when Buddy gave him the sample counterfeit money when they met after the arrest, like he didn't really know all the details, either.
There also seemed to be some kind of disappointment with the arrest itself, like they got some criminals on a significant charge but it wasn't what they were looking for.
My take was that while Buddy was using Vito as an informant to get at big-time crime figures, Vito was using him in reverse, partly to setup his kidnapping scheme but also to eliminate competing criminals not part of the outfit. There seemed to be some kind of disappointment at the quality of information Buddy was getting from Vito, like it wasn't helping him get the major criminals in his little book of mugshots and that Vito was turning in criminals but not the ones Buddy was really after.