"The television people said to me, 'Why don't you come with a real project, a real police thriller, with real producers, real actors?' "

After turning down the role of Dirty Harry, and seeing the subsequent success of the film Wayne made two police thrillers in quick succession.

And starting with "Petrovka 38," a 1965 police thriller, many of his works were published abroad.

It's as much a study of family trauma and social rejection as it is a police thriller.

The national market for police thrillers does seem to thrive on sadistic mutilations.

Joe Carnahan's gritty police thriller makes the good- cop-bad-cop formula seem new again.

Robert Daley, the American writer best known for his police thrillers, listened intently, but he already knew the story.

Yet, as with his police thrillers, this story's success depends on its being credible.

Allmovie called the film "execrable" and an "exploitational slice-n-dicer masquerading as a police thriller".

A police thriller with a difference.