Naked City (TV Series) The Face of the Enemy (1962) User Reviews

Warden Makes This One Of The Best Episodes

[ccthemovieman-1 · 9/10 · 5 July 2006]

Jack Warden plays "Neil Dagget," a World War II hero who snaps in the early '60s and goes on a killing spree. This was one of Warden's best performances in a television role, and this is one of the more action-packed and shocking episodes in this series.

He plays a guy who is about at the end of his rope: no job, an alcoholic, shunned by his family and now the final threat of not being able to see his son. He gets a job interview to make himself presentable enough to convince his ex- wife that he's fit to see his kid. Finally, as the interviewer makes it ultra-plain he's just hiring him to exploit his war record - something that's happened time-after- time, "Neil" snaps and shoots him! He then shoots other people on the way out the building....and it goes on from there with a shootout scene in a hotel.

The postscript was a real puzzler: did the man get his just due after living a post- war life of family-abuse (alcoholic rages and physically-mentally abusing his wife and two kids) or are we supposed to feel sorry for him because nobody cured him of his mental problems?

This question is posed at the end of the show. Believe it or not, the cops, particularly Paul Burke's "Det. Adam Flint," plead the latter. "Flint" is upset at the family. If I had been a member of that man's family, I doubt if I would have sided with the cops on this one. Their liberal sensibilities were way off-base here.

I killed 126 men to get that medal

[sol-kay · 7/10 · 10 August 2012]

***SPOILERS*** It's when highly decorated war hero Neil Daggett, Jack warden, hit rock bottom or the bottom of the gin bottle that he had a life changing experience. That experience ended up costing the lives of some half dozen or so New Yorkers. Estranged from his wife Edna, Kim Hunter, who divorced him for spousal abuse and not allowed to even attend his daughter Libby's, Nancy Malone's, wedding that he in fact robbed a jewelry store in order to get her a wedding present. Neil realized that he needed help and needed it fast to straighten out his life that was quickly going down the tubes.

Trying to get a job selling magazines Neil is greatly insulted, or dissed like we say now, and childishly condescended to by the man Mr. Hawk, Sorrell Brooke, who runs the magazine distribution in bringing up with a total failure he is even though he was one of America's most highly decorated fighting men in WWII. And that Neil should be glad to kiss his feet for giving him a crummy job that he has to break his back selling magazines door to door to make less then minimum pay. It's then that something snaps in Neil's head and all of a sudden he flips out grabbing Hawk's gun that he kept in his top draw and starts to shoot anyone that he feels in out to do him him! which includes the scared out of his pants Mr. Hawk.

Now back in the war that made him famous Neil goes on a shooting rampage knocking off anyone he feels is the enemy in his insane attempt to relive past glories. The body count goes up to almost a dozen with a NYPD cop as his last victim with Neil holed up in the very hotel where his daughter Libby and her husband are staying at. It's there where Neil make his last stand against society. A society that he feels has let him down by making money for itself off his fame as an American war hero. Where at the same time it left him a broken down alcoholic estranged from his family as well as those who honored him over the years for his bravery.

Pretty good "Naked City" episode but it got a bit too philosophical at times in it through the ultra sensitive NYPD Detective Let.Flint, Paul Burke, in him trying to explain the reasons for Neil Daggett's sudden breakdown and fit of murderous insanity. The guy was a genuine war hero and deserved all the honors that he go but the life he made from himself after the war was of his and his alone doings. And for Det. Flint to make excuses for Neil's brutal actions isn't going to bring back those some dozen or so innocent people that he ended up knifing, with a bayonet, and gunning down.

P.S Check out Sylvia Miles in a small role as a bar girl that Neil meets when he's on the lamb who despite his murderous demeanor and looking like he's about to flip his lid, which later he did, seems to have no fear of that sweating and crazed maniac at all. She even offers to buy him a free drink!

Falling down

[searchanddestroy-1 · 10/10 · 11 May 2018]

That's the typical Naked City basic scheme here, the summary of what most of the episodes of this fantastic TV series were based on. The story of a lonemy man, rejected by every one, war hero, who has then nothing to lose except his dignity. I remind Joel Schumacher's FALLING DOWN, starring michael Douglas, remember? A pure tragic social drama, depicting a collapsing society. No thriller nor crime elements in this tale, although there is a body count in the episode.