The Seven-Ups

The Seven-Ups is a 1973 crime film set in New York City, where an elite police unit operates with unusual independence. Its members bend departmental rules and use the methods of the criminals they pursue, and their leader, Buddy, keeps a long-standing friendship with a underworld figure named Vito. That relationship becomes the source of the trouble at the centre of the story: after a raid goes wrong, Buddy tries to find out who killed a colleague and turns up a scheme to abduct gangsters for ransom.

Philip D'Antoni directed the film from a screenplay by Albert Ruben and Alexander Jacobs, and he also produced it through his own company alongside 20th Century Fox. It was his first film as director, following his work as a producer on earlier New York crime pictures, and he did not go on to direct further features. Roy Scheider plays Buddy, with Tony Lo Bianco as Vito, and the credited cast runs to 35 names, among them Jerry Leon, Victor Arnold, Ken Kercheval and Larry Haines.

The film runs 103 minutes and was released in December 1973. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.8 from around 7,600 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.4 from about 131 votes, a much smaller sample.