Review: A landmark Brooklyn police standoff in ‘Hold Your Fire’
When there are so many fictional, burly varieties of heroes so regularly on movie screens, it’s jarring to see that the genuine article can be a humble, gaunt former traffic cop who believed in the power of talking.
Harvey Schlossberg, who had a doctorate in psychology, is one of the faces of Stefan Forbes’ gripping and illuminating documentary “Hold Your Fire,” which chronicles a 1973 robbery of a Brooklyn sporting goods store that turned into a hostage standoff that lasted 47 hours with throngs of observers and protesters huddled nearby beneath the elevated subway.
The scene is classically New York, with masses of police on the brink of a siege and a city simmering with tension and anger. If it sounds like something out of “Dog Day Afternoon,” it was. The Brooklyn bank robbery that inspired Sidney Lumet’s 1975 film had taken place the year before. All of this was in the aftermath of the Attica prison riots and other violent hostage standoffs like at the Munich Olympics.