Word: serpico
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...Bruce Weitz) thinks he's Serpico; everybody else thinks he's psycho. In charge of the carnage and chaos is Captain Francis Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti), a good, strong man breeding an ulcer while trying to do a tough job. At the end of every crisis-strewn day, each superb show, Furillo struggles home in an uneasy truce with his job, his willful woman (Veronica Hamel) and himself. Doubtless, he feels very much like Fred Silverman. Viewers will do him and themselves a favor by visiting Hill Street as often as possible...
Pacino trundles Serpico-style to Greenwich Village and sets up shop. He spends days with his nextdoor neighbor, Ted (Don Scardino), a gay playwright ("you know, boy meets boy, boy loses boy, boy gets analyst") who is scared to death of cruising, preferring to frequent more traditional gay cafes that Friedkin never shows. Nights, Pacino cruises, donning his leather outfit like a pudgy boy pulling on his first Halloween costume. Later, of course, the leather will no longer be a costume and Pacino will stop fumbling with the cruising paraphernalia. He will fit into the crowd in that hole across...
...especially hard act to follow, but Jewison found a superb successor in the person of Al Pacino. Pacino, who plays Arthur Kirkland, the film's do-good hero, first made the big time as Michael in The Godfather. He made it again as the run down hero of Serpico thee years ago, but there's been a drought since. Now comes Arthur Kirkland, who works perfectly for Pacino because he's a blend of Michael Corleone and Serpico. Like Corleone, Kirkland wants to do everything himself; like Serpico, he's a man fighting society in the name of justice...
Made in America seems at first blush an odd title for a novel about the Mafia, but Peter Maas should be forgiven his irony. Sicily's best-known export has, of course, become as American as frozen pizza. As Maas has shown in The Valachi Papers and Serpico, Cosa Nostra reaches far below the imperial realms of The Godfather into virtually every working-class neighborhood where cash is short and the Mob's loan sharks cruise...
...Serpico. Blood and guts story of the New York undercover detective who was set up by other police because he refused to go along with the department's "official" payoff system. Al Pacino in one of his lesser roles--lots of nice disguises, a crazed scene with Pacino caught in a door, and the crooks inside pointing a gun at his head with the complicity of the backup officers, more blood than a hospital. Which is, well, maybe your cup of tea--much better to see Serpico battling crooked cops than Clint Eastwood murdering everybody. But the bloody scenes alternate...