Word: serpico
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...Serpico is an energetic melodrama, with just enough realistic bite to shine against its current rivals. Its entertainment values hide a sour joke: one of the few heroic stories of our time has been filmed by men who lack their hero's passionate commitment to advance righteous endeavors to the necessary ends...
...Serpico was convinced that police were the true guardians of society, a secular breed of Jesuits. His one burning hope was to become a good cop; he loved the vigor and ingenuity which the work requires, but above all he wanted to serve the people of his precincts. Even when he discovered that the force was pitted with corruption--that almost the entire plainclothes division raked in protection money from gambling and whorehouses--he refused to let that recognition sink him. He never quit: he took his allegations before a series of Lindsay aides and deputy commissioners and finally broke...
Director Sidney Lumet and screenwriters Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler follow the structure of the Peter Maas biography. The portrait of the wounded Serpico, being shuttled to a hospital from Harlem, hooks us as the film opens; we then flashback to the highlights of the policeman's career and life. These chart the growth of the man's disillusionment and discontent, as well as the strength of his personal integrity. The film develops with its title character: the derailment of Serpico's life both by those police who were corrupt and those who refused to inflict punishment, carries as much...
...apart from the grip of the story and Al Pacino's soulful lead performance, Serpico is superficial, even heartless. The filmmakers have done no original investigations, and accept the reportage of Peter Maas as gospel. In their film, no other cop besides Serpico and an idealistic inspector are at all virtuous; Serpico's Ivy League associate, David Durk, is here preening and pompous, nothing like the dedicated, befuddled naif whom even Maas found sincere. And Lumet, Salt and Wexler never detail the reluctance of police higher-ups to listen to Serpico: New York City and police officials are cardboard figures...
Most damaging of all is that essential human material is skimped. Serpico's honesty, and his appreciation of the diversity of urban life, are scarcely rooted. Lumet lets us glimpse the man's Old World Italian family (his father and brother are cobblers) and his Greenwich Village girlfriends. He creates locker-room comedy out of Serpico's love for opera and ballet. But the crucial gap between his personal life and public service, and the despair that drove him to paranoia and defensive put-ons are only vaguely rendered, like a plainclothesman's arrest sheets...