***SPOILERS*** It's here where the in love with all man and womankind as well as all living things big and small, as well as microscopic, NYPD Detective Adam Flint. Paul Burke, was to face reality head on. Det. Flint was chosen as one of the twelve eye witnesses to the Novermber 19, 1962 11:00 PM execution of mad dog cop, as well as others, killer Phil Hames, Richard Hamilton. It was in fact Det. Flint who arrested Hames after he run out of bullets by gunning down two NYPD policemen.
Feeling far more scared then Hames who's execution he's to whiteness in Sing Sing Prison Det. Flint reviews his life experiences as he's about to experience the taking of Hames' life. An that just about drives the by now paranoid Det. Flint nuts! It's not all that easy to watch a man die right before your eyes even one as murderous and remorseless as Phil Hames. And for the super bleeding heart liberal Det. Flint it's sheer torture for him to say the least.
Before he was to go to Sing Sing to watch Hames die Det Flint went to among other people the doctor,Arthur Behrstock, who delivered him some 32, on September 16, 1930, years ago. Acting hysterical and looking like he's about to loose it the Doc realizes that Det. Flint is under a great amount of stress and advises him to take some sedatives to clam himself down. It wasn't the stress of him knowing how he acted in the maternity ward when he was born that's bugging Det. Flint but how he'll react in the Sing Sing death house watching Phil Hames die.
Despite cracking up for just a brief moment when Hames was lead and strapped into the Sing Sing eclectic chair to be zapped by 2,000 volts of electricity and face his maker Det Flint kept his composure and didn't make a spectacle of himself during the entire execution process. He just stood there watching the man that he arrested face death. A death that Det. Flint himself refrained for handing him when he had Hames, while still holding his gun, in his gun-site the afternoon he arrested him.
P.S Check out a young Gene Hackman as out of town eye witness reporter Mr. Jasper the guy with the extremely sweaty palms who like Det. Flint was also to whiteness Phil Hames execution. The two, Jasper & Flint, weren't anywhere ready to whiteness a man going to his death but that experience made them realize, if they already didn't, how precious life, human or otherwise, is and how inhuman it is to be extinguished. Even for a ruthless mass or serial murderer like the late Phil Hames.
