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The movie’s Beck, his glasses falling apart, his taxes overdue, his sanity in question, has become, superficially, Columbo crossed with James Dean.

cop-but it’s been hammered into the usual one-man vendetta saga. Supposedly “Dead-Bang” is based on fact-Beck is a real-life L.A. Johnson’s Jerry Beck gives the movie some internal tension, which it really needs.

Johnson and Frankenheimer cannily play up the character’s near-alcoholism, his hair-trigger temper, vulnerability to insult and his shame-faced little-boy shuffle when he gets in a jam. He keeps grabbing onto things-bottles, people, his own clothes-like a bleary golden boy after an all-night binge. In John Frankenheimer’s “Dead-Bang” (citywide), Don Johnson, playing a scruffy Los Angeles cop hot on the trail of a fascist underground group, has a squeezed-up, desperate look.