Sidney Lumet’s Q & A is an excitingly well-crafted police movie, but he’s a good director and I think that was the easy part for him. What was hard–what the movie is really about–is the rough and careless way that cops and other tough guys throw around racial insults. I’m not talking about how they address their clients out in the streets, I’m talking about how they regard each other–the Blacks and Irish and Jews and Hispanics and Italians and Slavs who make up their world. It is almost a badge of honor in certain circles to use, and ignore, racist verbal labels (…). The law provides a context for how cops treat civilians, criminal or not; but does it also provide an arena where a racial contest for power in the city takes place? Can the law be color-blind, when none of its instruments are? It is fascinating the way this movie works so well as a police thriller on one level, while on other levels it probes feelings we may keep secret even from ourselves. — Roger Ebert