 | Bruce Greenwood as Jerry Dove |
(1988 made-for-tv movie / originally released 11/27/88)
A
docu-drama chronicling the bloodiest shootout in F.B.I. history, Bruce Greenwood plays Special Agent Jerry Dove, the newest and youngest member of the real F.B.I. unit profiled. A film of great merit, it’s a genuine chiller, calmly charting the lives of the Miami agents who dealt with the murderous crime spree as well as the two deranged killers, played brilliantly against type by David Soul and Michael Gross. Based on a true story that has been profiled on several noted crime shows, all the characters actually existed, which probably explains why Greenwood’s hair was dyed dark brown. Jerry Dove was much younger than his colleagues and had just joined this highly prestigious Miami division months before the shootout occurred. Inexperienced and unmarried, he was probably the least complicated member of the team and as such his story gets slightly short-changed. But in fact, none of the agents is nearly as well explored as the two brutal criminals themselves, who lived seemingly normal lives but were piously amoral and totally without conscience.
Bruce Greenwood’s first project after leaving St. Elsewhere, this was a highly notable undertaking - well researched, well reviewed and well acted by an ensemble cast that includes Doug Sheehan as Sr. Special Agent Gordon McNeill, the head of the crime unit, and Ronnie Cox - Greenwood’s recent St. Elsewhere colleague - as Special Agent Benjamin Grogan, the oldest and most experienced member of the unit with whom he was purposefully paired. The shootout, which was diligently researched and extensively detailed, takes up the last 20 minutes of the film and is so honestly portrayed that it’s disturbingly painful to watch. Greenwood is enacting one of the two agents killed, and his death - which he watched coming as his gun jammed - is graphically real and extremely unsettling.
A spoken epilogue at the end of the movie explains that The Miami Firefight (as it came to be called) of April 11, 1986, was so devastating for the FBI that it has examined this incident more closely than any other in its history - both to determine what went wrong and also to prevent it from ever happening again. The epilogue also recounts what happened to the surviving agents, almost all of whom were multiply shot and severely wounded.
It’s a fascinating movie, which is repeated often on television - though inexplicably minus one Greenwood beach scene. The commercial video was released over ten years ago and is now out-of-print, occassionally selling on eBay for healthy prices. However, a much needed and reasonably priced DVD has recently been released.
Sound Files from The F.B.I. Murders
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 "I'm a Man" | 27 secs |
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Jerry Dove meets his new boss | 46 secs |
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Jerry confides in Ben | 37 secs |
 | Jerry Dove
1956-1986 |  |
Although this movie necessarily deals only superficially with the real Jerry Dove, it does cover him honestly. He was a runner just as the film portrays him, and now has a marathon named in his honor. He was born in January 1956, making him roughly the same age as Bruce Greenwood.
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