Badge of Betrayal (1997 TV Movie) User Reviews

Harry Hamlin as a big bad sheriff

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 25 August 2005]

It seems that after a successful career as a handsome leading man, Harry Hamlin has turned to playing rotten characters. His role in "Badge of Betrayal" is no exception. As sheriff in a small Wyoming town, Hamlin runs the place, stealing evidence, denying Miranda rights, intimidating women, the whole gamut. He sets his sights on a new officer, Michele Greene, who mistakenly takes the job seriously and is offended by his sexual harassment. This leads to big problems for her, but she sticks with it because she has to. The real estate man who sold her a new house informs her that, thanks to the sheriff, there won't be any buyers for her place if she needs to move on. Nice guy. Eventually, she attempts to build a case against Hamlin with the help of an attorney. It's scary going.

Hamlin has a real panache for these evil roles. He's mean as dirt. Michele Greene is a perfect foil, delicate in looks but quietly feisty in attitude.

There's nothing that goes on in this town that I don't know about

[sol1218 · 6/10 · 29 September 2007]

**SPOILERS** You usual control freak with a badge movie has handsome but mentally unstable Sheriff Dave Ward, Harry Hamlin,running the small, on the Canadian, border town of Redwood like it's his own little fiefdom where his word is the only law in town. Sheriff Ward is also big with the ladies in town even though were constantly told that he's happily married with his wife being about as visible, or invisible, as that of TV L.A Detective Let. Francis Columbo who's only heard of but never seen by anyone in the audience or cast.

It's when perky and pretty single mom Annie Walter, Michele Greene, shows up at the local police station for a job interview that Sheriff Ward starts to overplay his hand. That in the end leads to Ward's ultimate downfall as the top dog in Redwood by becoming just another jailbird in a Federal pen facing a long stretch behind bars.

Annie transferring from the Cincinnati PD is a bit more sophisticated, then the members of the Redwood Police Department, with the law and how it should be both followed and applied. She soon realizes that the handsome Sheriff Ward is not only a sexual harasser, which is the least of his many imperfections, but also an illegal drug and contraband dealer. The Sheriff also likes to work over helpless prisoners in getting them to confess to crimes that they didn't commit.

It's when Sheriff Ward starts to put the screws on Annie, in trying to get her to go to bed with him, that she goes over his head with a sexual harassment suit that she files against him. It was a hard thing for Annie to do since she's stuck in Redwood with her young daughter Sarha, Elysa Hogg,and a $180,000 mortgage form a cabin that the manipulative Sheriff Ward got for her.

Sheriff Ward not only leans on Annie but his private secretary Patty Renault, Linda Doucett, which has the two women file federal sexual harassment charges against him. Sheriff Ward is now also very desperate to keep the lid on his illegal, which the sexual harassment suit can expose, activities in town which can very well, and do, bring the weight of the Federal Government, or the FBI, on top of him.

You know right away as soon as you see him that Sheriff Ward is a bit off center with him always wearing heavily bleached dungarees instead of the police issued pants that all the police in his department wear. Maybe this was his way of being either sexy, to the the women in town, or just pain different. There's also the strange relationship that the Sheriff has with Redwood's local child abuser, and later rapist, Fred Brandon, Don Thompson. Thompson is always getting drunk and beating the living hell of his pre-teenage daughter Kristi, Amber Warrent, with Sheriff Ward, after busting Thompson's face up, letting him go free and on to later continue his beating Kristi?

It's later found out that Thompson is involved with the Sheriff's illegal drug and contraband smuggling activities which is why he's always covering up for him. Later when Sheriff Ward catches Thompson stealing some of his sh*t he has no trouble smashing his skull in with his flashlight killing him. This mindless act on Sheriff Ward's part brought the FBI, who were watching him for months, into the mix and had Annie stick her neck out, with an undercover wire, to finally catch the bum.

Actually Sheriff Ward's sexual harassment of both Annie and Patty, who later dropped all the charges against him, would never have gotten anywhere with him being an upstanding citizen and happily married, with his wife never being seen at all in the film, man. It was his illegal drug pushing or dealing, as well as arrogance, not his inflamed and overactive libido that in the end did Sheriff Ward in where he ended up being the one getting screwed instead of his female victims.

What else is new?

[dreababe87 · 6/10 · 6 October 2002]

oh come on!! this movie is the old,"I'm a man, i can do whatever i want, women are weak" story.

basically, a female police officer comes into this town, unaware of what "really goes on". she doesnt realize what goes on until the end(: ) then finally, she tricks him and he feels like a dummy. but i havent said the best part. THE CREDITS!!!!!!!!!

The Weaker Sex

[rmax304823 · 2/10 · 26 February 2008]

This is really written by the numbers. A single mother (Michelle Greene) takes a job as a deputy sheriff in a Northwestern town. Her boss is Harry Hamlin. He seems like a nice enough guy, but then, married though he is, he makes some rather brusque moves on her. She finds this offensive. She also finds it offensive that he's been carrying on a long affair with his secretary (Linda Doucette, a beautiful, sweet name), and that he clobbers prisoners and mere suspects who may or may not be guilty. Then there's some dope that disappeared from a bag that was supposed to be put in evidence.

Hamlin is really a guileful miscreant in a dapper uniform. With his bristling star and Mussolini jaw, he exudes power and confidence. "Get me some coffee," he tells his trembling secretary, and, when she hesitates, asks, "Did I say LATER?" He beats her up too, adding injury to insult.

Greene confides to a polite, slender, balding male friend (that is to say, a wimp) that she has doubts about her boss. The friend is sympathetic. But one night the two are car-jacked and made to crawl on their hands and knees along a dirt road at night. End of well-meaning wimp's attraction to her.

Just about everybody seems to lie to Greene or betray her. When Linda Doucette shows up one morning with a black eye, Greene talks her into seeing a lawyer who calls herself the champion of "lost causes." Hamlin gets wind of this -- he gets wind of everything, like a hyena -- and Doucette soon chickens out too.

Enter some faceless FBI agents who tell her that Sheriff Hamlin is guilty of running all the dope in the greater metropolitan area, as well as child pornography rings, sex slavery, mopery in the first degree, malfeasance of whatever, exhibiting lewd photographs of Oprah Winfrey, and that he practices Satanism and smokes cigarettes in his basement when no one is looking.

A quick fix and Harry Hamlin visits Greene to shut her up once and for all, as he's done to other squealers. The FBI robots rush in at the last moment to save her but they're not needed. She's already outwitted Hamlin, recorded his confessions and threats on tape, and plugged him in the shoulder.

If there is an original shot, scene, or utterance in this movie, I missed it. You know precisely what's coming next. All men are brutes and a good woman can trust no one but herself. If the heroine and heavies had been gender-reversed -- if it had been a hero surrounded by brutal, cruel, hopeless, selfish women -- this would be condemned as the sexist trash that it is.

As it is, the thing makes you want to put a stop to the goings-on and say, "Now, boys and girls, I'd like you to apologize to each other, shake hands, and make friends." It's straight out of a third-grade schoolroom, I admit, but that's the level at which this would-be morality tale operates. Besides, what else can we boys and girls do? We can't very well INVADE each other or blow up the other's buildings.

Harry Hamlin at his best

[thisisadm · 9/10 · 8 February 2005]

This Film is Classic Hamlin - lots of lurking, lots of beating people (both men and women) and of course it takes place in the most dangerous of all the states - Wyoming. A must see for all you Hamlin lovers out there. Hamlin is a small town sheriff who gets what he wants when he wants it, until that is a big city cop played by Michelle Green moves into town. What ensues is a mysterious game of cat and mouse played by the overbearing, blue jean wearing, dart throwing Hamlin and his newest member of the force. In a plot full of twists turns and more than a few cases of sexual assault the mystery of the drug smuggling ring in Wyoming is finally solved. Simply a great watch with an ending worth lurking around for.

Harry Hamlin delivers...

[MarieGabrielle · 8/10 · 14 December 2007]

A believable and narcissistic performance as a local sheriff who runs his small Northwest town any way he wishes.

Michele Greene is also very believable, a deputy, struggling to survive as a single Mom, trying at first to retain her job.

Linda Doucett a former 80's actress who portrays Hamlin's sometime mistress, is not sympathetic, but delineates the environment which sometimes creates oppression, sexual harassment, enabling negative behavior and a hostile work environment.

Years ago, the harassment was tolerated and even accepted. Today it is illegal. This story in particular as it addresses these issues, and is noteworthy and timely. Recommended. 8/10.

How can we trap a rotten elected sheriff?

[Dr_Coulardeau · 8/10 · 13 July 2007]

A little film that deals very effectively with some basic issues. A single mother, a cop by profession, arriving in a small city in a rather out of the way county in the state of Washington. She is hired by the local sheriff who has been elected and reelected quite a few times but is also as rotten as any rotten apple in any basket. He is the one who controls all the petty little miserable traffics in the county and makes money out of them. One of the traffics seems to be heroin. He is also violent and does not accept no for an answer. Either you die – by accident of course – or you are hassled to death or nearly. What's more he is a male chauvinistic pig who is violent with his secretary-lover and is sexually harassing the new arriver. This explosive situation leads that new arriver to a case of divided loyalties: loyalty to public welfare and loyalty to her superior and boss. The conflict is inevitable. It ends well by pure accident and chance. In most cases of that type it would end very badly. But the film does not want to be realistic. It aims at being pedagogical, and it is. But can it be effective too, since it is so naive.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne