Serpico (1973)
21KSerpico: Directed by Sidney Lumet. With Al Pacino, John Randolph, Jack Kehoe, Biff McGuire. An honest New York cop named Frank Serpico blows the whistle on rampant corruption in the force only to have his comrades turn against him.
“Sidney Lumet is a director who captures something crucial in city based dramas surrounding legal and political affairs; with films like u0026#39;12 angry menu0026#39;, u0026#39;the verdictu0026#39;, u0026#39;nightfalls on Manhattanu0026#39; and u0026#39;Q u0026amp; Au0026#39; he shows an excellent grasp of the power plays in civic politics. In u0026#39;Serpicou0026#39; he uses an excellent script to tell the story of an unorthodox character in Frank Serpico, a hippie in a time when most cops were square as a doorway but whose honesty when faced with police corruption marks him out as a man of remarkable character. Unflinching in its depiction of Serpico, the film portrays warts and all, over the period in which he refuses to take money and shows his extraordinary political vindication at an official investigation into NYPD corruption. The story of civic corruption is cogent in any time, one only has to look at great empires like Rome to understand how much corruption plays a part in the shaping of so called civilizations; where the very foundation stones have bodies, so to speak, buried under them or even within them. This film is both informative and honest in much the way u0026#39;All the Presidents Menu0026#39; would be in the following year. Winning Al Pacino a deserved Oscar nomination in the years between the Godfatheru0026#39;s Part I and II; it demonstrates the range of an actor who would go on to portray a character in Michael Corleone soon afterwards who is the very nemisis of the character in Serpico. In Serpico there is a dramadocumentary that calls to mind Shakespeares history plays in its depiction of a classical situation of a man ostracized and driven by noble sentiments to embody something of the civic value one expects of servants of the public trust. Brilliant film. 10 out of 10.”
