Rating: R
Genre:
Drama
Theatrical Release: 02/21/1974(Italy)
Release Date: 12/03/2002
SubTitles: English
Dubbed: English/French
Sound: DD1/DD5.1
Run Time: 130 Minutes
Flags: Violence, Adult Situations, Adult Language
Distributor/Studio: Paramount
Adapted by
Waldo Salt and
Norman Wexler from
Peter Maas's book,
Sidney Lumet's
drama portrays the real-life struggle of an honest New York City cop against a corrupt system. Neophyte officer
Frank Serpico (
Al Pacino) is determined not to let his job get in the way of his individuality. Despite his colleagues' leery reactions, he keeps one foot firmly planted in the counterculture, sporting a beard and love beads and living in bohemian Greenwich Village, while he performs his police duties with dispatch.
Serpico's peers genuinely ostracize him, however, when he refuses to take bribes like everybody else. Appalled by the extent of police corruption,
Serpico goes to his superiors, but when he discovers that they have ignored his charges, he takes the potentially fatal step of breaking the blue wall of silence and going public with his exposé.
Serpico's revelations trigger an independent investigation by the Knapp Commission, but they also make him a marked man, permanently changing his life. Shot on location with a gritty emphasis on
documentary-style realism,
Serpico presents a city in decay both literally and morally, as everybody is in on the take, and the cops and criminals are almost interchangeable. Released in late 1973, after months of revelations of Presidential malfeasance in the breaking Watergate scandal,
Serpico's true story of bureaucratic depravity touched a cultural nerve, and the film became a hit with both critics and audiences, particularly for
Pacino's complex performance as the honest, long-haired whistleblower. One year after his star-making triumph in
The Godfather,
Pacino was nominated for an Oscar again, and lost again;
Lumet and
Pacino would reunite two years later for another true New York story,
Dog Day Afternoon.
~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
