Dennis Franz's understated delivery makes difficult men worth spending time with. NYPD Blue gives us ample reason to value him, though persistent casting as cops and heavies left too few opportunities elsewhere.
Fi1m perspective
Andy Sipowicz can be abrasive company, and Dennis Franz does not hurry to make him agreeable. In NYPD Blue (1993), his size and voice help establish the detective's authority, but the delivery is understated enough to leave room for feeling. We cared about him more than we expected, because Franz made the black humour feel personal. The jokes give us a way into a man whose difficult behaviour could otherwise have become tiresome.
Brian De Palma cast him as Detective Marino in Dressed to Kill (1980) and Manny Karp in Blow Out (1981). Television brought two police parts, Sal Benedetto and Lieutenant Norman Buntz, in Hill Street Blues (1981), and further work with producer Steven Bochco. In Die Hard 2 (1990), he was an airport police captain, Carmine Lorenzo. By his own count, Sipowicz was his 28th police role.
NYPD Blue makes the fullest use of those familiar qualities, with a cast and writing strong enough to support him. Franz keeps the emotional passages from feeling as though they belong to a different programme; Sipowicz need not become suddenly pleasant for us to take his feelings seriously. That is careful acting, and we recommend the series warmly for it. The reservation is that its plotting is more conventional than the rough style promises. His performance gives those stories a personal interest, but it cannot make their construction less familiar.
His central role in NYPD Blue lasted through its 1993–2005 run, after which he retired from acting. The narrowness of the casting still leaves us wishing for more chances to see him outside police stations. That is a reservation about the opportunities, not a complaint that Sipowicz needed to be softened. Start there, and allow Franz to be disagreeable.
Biography
Dennis Franz is an American actor. Born Dennis Franz Schlachta on 28 October 1944 in Maywood, Illinois, he graduated from Southern Illinois University Carbondale with a degree in speech and theatre. He began his professional career with Chicago’s Organic Theatre Company and was later discovered by director Robert Altman.
Franz is best known for portraying Detective Andy Sipowicz in the television series NYPD Blue (1993–2005). The role earned him four Primetime Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award. He had previously played two different characters on the NBC series Hill Street Blues (1983, 1985–1987) and appeared in its spin-off Beverly Hills Buntz (1987–1988).
His film credits include Dressed to Kill (1980), Blow Out (1981) as Manny Karp, Psycho II (1983), Scarface (1983), Body Double (1984), Die Hard 2 (1990) as Captain Carmine Lorenzo, The Player (1992) and City of Angels (1998).
