In a film about a man who's in the film playing the best friend of himself, it's an unashamedly affectionate apology for life and antics of Mr French Connection Eddie Egan. In fact the portrayal of the man himself by the man himself played in front of him becomes so uncomfortably assertive I started to feel like I should leave the room, that perhaps the movie would rather be on its own.
Still with all that love on show it should come as no surprise it's a racist, sexist and somewhat tedious police procedural with its morality clasped somewhat firmly (ahem) with Duvall's contempt with everyone and everything that's not Cop and meting out punishment for being less mortally challenged than his God-spot.
While the aforementioned TFC was an prescient existential nightmare about the USA's damaged ego and rightly lauded, Badge presents a throwback to Fritz Lang's The Big Heat when one man can make a difference like a proto John McLean without the wisecracks, and was justly ignored as fable.