It stars Roy Scheider as a crusading policeman who is the leader of the Seven-Ups, a squad of plainclothes officers who use dirty, unorthodox tactics to snare their quarry on charges leading to prison sentences of seven years or more upon prosecution, hence the name of the team.

He was earlier responsible for producing the action thriller Bullitt, followed by The French Connection, which won him the 1971 Academy Award for Best Picture.

Several other people who worked on The French Connection were also involved in this film, such as Scheider, screenwriter and police technical advisor Sonny Grosso, composer Don Ellis, and stunt coordinator Bill Hickman.

NYPD detective Buddy Manucci has been under pressure from the senior officers in the New York City police force because his team of renegade policemen, known as the "seven-ups" (so called because most criminals they arrest receive sentences from seven years and up) have been using unorthodox methods to arrest criminals; this is illustrated as the team ransacks an antiques store that is a front for the running of counterfeit money.

A ransom for his release is paid at a car wash. Manucci, while making the rounds through his old neighborhood, is tipped off by a local barber & family friend that he has witnessed an increased presence of guns on the streets during the last few months.

This causes Buddy and the squad to start trailing some of the key crime figures to gather clues for the escalating unrest and tensions amongst the local syndicate.

The squad stake out a funeral meeting of Kalish and his people, disaster follows, and it leads to shootings causing the death of one of the Seven-up officers and life-threatening injuries to one of the crime family members.

Manucci and the rest of the Seven-Ups are placed on suspension pending investigation as NYPD Internal Affairs considers them prime suspects of the kidnappings.

[5] Canadian TV writer Philip Hersch was hired by producer Phil d'Antoni to write the script based on the real life exploits of Sonny Grosso and Eddie Egan.

The funeral-home sequence where Ansel is abducted was filmed at the side entrance to Lucia Brothers Funeral Home on the corner of E. 184th and Hoffman Streets.

Aside from the Third Avenue Line and the fact that the one-way vehicle traffic on Hoffman Street has since been reversed, the locations remain today for the most part as they did in the movie.

The climactic shootout scene at the end of the movie was filmed in areas just outside Co-op City's Section Five, at what today is Erskine Place, between De Reimer and Palmer Avenues.