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Serpico
Al Pacino received his second Oscar nomination for his performance in Serpico, a gritty 1973 docudrama which found Pacino playing a real life police officer trying to blow the lid off police corruption.
The film introduces Frank Serpico as a fresh-faced police academy graduate eager to make the world a better place to live, but finds his personal agenda muddied when he begins to learn that the bad guys are not all killing and raping and that some of them are sitting in squad cars with him. Frank is genuinely shocked when he learns that his fellow officers are lining their pockets with money from local businessmen and criminals. Frank finds a way out of being a uniform cop but finds the corruption is at an even deeper on the undercover level, making Frank not only a pariah with criminals, but with fellow police officers as well.
You know you're not going to be in for a typical police drama during the opening moments of the film when word reaches the station that Serpico has been shot and someone asks if a cop did it. This one little exchange of dialogue was the perfect hook to keep me riveted to find out what this guy did that was so terrible that even his fellow officers hate him.
There were a couple of things that I kept waiting for to happen but didn't. One, I expected Frank to give up and become another officer on the take and two, I expected Frank to persuade some fellow officer to join him in his battle against corruption, but neither of these things occur, taking this one a notch above the average police drama.
Director Sidney Lumet provides another atmospheric look at New York and its surrounding boroughs, filled with colorful characters and realistic dialogue. I must admit I did chuckle during the roll call scene where joints were passed out for officers to smoke so they recognize the smell and recognize the side effects in perps, whhich I found a little hard to swallow. Al Pacino's raw and explosive performance in the title role is nothing short of a revelation, a performance that galvanizes the screen and gnaws at the viewer's insides, a terrific collaboration between actor and director, who would reunite a few years later for Dog Day Afternoon, but their first work together is definitely worth investing in.
Al Pacino received his second Oscar nomination for his performance in Serpico, a gritty 1973 docudrama which found Pacino playing a real life police officer trying to blow the lid off police corruption.
The film introduces Frank Serpico as a fresh-faced police academy graduate eager to make the world a better place to live, but finds his personal agenda muddied when he begins to learn that the bad guys are not all killing and raping and that some of them are sitting in squad cars with him. Frank is genuinely shocked when he learns that his fellow officers are lining their pockets with money from local businessmen and criminals. Frank finds a way out of being a uniform cop but finds the corruption is at an even deeper on the undercover level, making Frank not only a pariah with criminals, but with fellow police officers as well.
You know you're not going to be in for a typical police drama during the opening moments of the film when word reaches the station that Serpico has been shot and someone asks if a cop did it. This one little exchange of dialogue was the perfect hook to keep me riveted to find out what this guy did that was so terrible that even his fellow officers hate him.
There were a couple of things that I kept waiting for to happen but didn't. One, I expected Frank to give up and become another officer on the take and two, I expected Frank to persuade some fellow officer to join him in his battle against corruption, but neither of these things occur, taking this one a notch above the average police drama.
Director Sidney Lumet provides another atmospheric look at New York and its surrounding boroughs, filled with colorful characters and realistic dialogue. I must admit I did chuckle during the roll call scene where joints were passed out for officers to smoke so they recognize the smell and recognize the side effects in perps, whhich I found a little hard to swallow. Al Pacino's raw and explosive performance in the title role is nothing short of a revelation, a performance that galvanizes the screen and gnaws at the viewer's insides, a terrific collaboration between actor and director, who would reunite a few years later for Dog Day Afternoon, but their first work together is definitely worth investing in.