Frank Serpico is a true American hero, who’s bravery and honesty eventually led to real change within the New York police force. His life makes for compelling story telling. Sidney Lumet was one of Hollywood’s more socially conscious directors when he took over an existing project to make a movie based on Serpico’s crusade against police corruption. The subject matter of the movie matched perfectly with Lumet’s social sensitivities. The resultant film is one of the most tense and riveting police dramas to have come out of the new Hollywood cinema of the 70’s.
Similar to what is happening in America today, crime was a major problem in the United States in the late 60’s and early 70’s. New York City was at the time the big shiny example of what was wrong with urban America. Frank Serpico, growing up in 1950’s Brooklyn, New York, was enamored with police officers as a child, and becoming a New York City police officer was his dream job. By 1959 he had enlisted in the police force, then spent his police career working as first a uniformed cop, and then a plain clothes police officer in the 60’s. Finally, at the start of the 70’s he was a narcotics detective. Right at the start of his career, he experienced widespread police corruption during a period in New York that was infamous for its inner-city crime. By the end of the 60’s Serpico became a whistle blower on police corruption. The movie compresses this period in his life into one taut and gritty political police drama.
The movie opens with Serpico (Al Pacino in one of his legendary iconic performances), now a narcotics detective, being rushed to the hospital after being shot. We hear one of the characters raise his fear that Serpico was shot by another police officer. The rest of the movie is then shown in flashbacks, from when he first enters the police force, up until the fateful shooting. In between, Serpico is shown as being an honest man who wants to do good, while most of the police force is either corrupt or enables corruption to exist. Set in a time where each department is responsible for investigating themselves, Serpico, who never kept bribes offered to him, keeps trying to first, just do his job while ignoring the corruption, and then trying to get his superiors to put an end to corruption. In both instances, he fails miserably.
The movie has a very dark and bleak tone to its vision, as Lumet gives a dark, grimy feel to both the dirty streets of New York and the dark-stained walls of the police station. Both ominous-looking backgrounds ooze with danger. The danger of a big violent city and the danger of a threatening police community. If anyone wanted to know why New York City in the 60s and 70s was such an unpleasant place, then the movie is telling us that it was the criminals that controlled it all. While this corruption was mentioned in Coppola’s, “Godfather,” in that movie it is made to look like a selective issue. In “Serpico”, we are shown that bribery and extortion is rampant throughout the force, with the honest police being a very small minority. At least that is the impression I had when watching the movie. For example, in one department that Serpico works in, the only non-corrupt officer willing to work with him is the branch police chief, hinting that they were the only two people not corrupt in the entire station.
Whenever I see something that is so extreme in its depiction, it verges on propaganda and is maybe hard to believe. However, since I remember the sleezy feel of New York City in the 70s, I also tend to believe that there is a lot of truth that is shown in Lumet’s film. How else can you explain the quantity of drug dealers and prostitutes that populated the New York streets during this period? The 60’s and 70’s of New York also served as the main headquarters of the Italian Mob, which also made sense in terms of rampant police corruption.
“Serpico” features a superb, iconic performance from one of Hollywood’s great actors. Pacino had just completed making “The Godfather,” but it was this movie that cemented his place as a premier talent. Still playing within type as an Italian American, Pacino’s, Serpico is a complex character and not your run of the mill puritan hero. The screenplay and Pacino’s performance show how Serpico begins his career as a charismatic free spirit who is easily likeable by everyone. As the difficulty of being an honest man working in a corrupt system begins to take effect on him, he begins to unravel within his personality, becoming angry and bitter. Pacino is brilliant in showing this transformation, making Serpico the person into a living breathing human being rather than some idea of justice and honesty. The performance and depiction help in keeping the story fixed on its strong, devastating message.
Lumet visualizes New York City of the 60s and early 70s for what it was. A giant run-down city full of filth and dirt, and an unsafe, dark, dangerous place to live. The neo-noire images that are depicted in the movie match the grimness of the true story being depicted.
Was the New York police force in this period that corrupt? I am not sure, however, the city that I knew was very edgy and crime-ridden, making this accusation of police corruption not extremely hard to believe. “Serpico,” is one of Sydney Lumet’s best and most serious films. It is hard hitting and fascinating at the same time. An important movie that is must-see cinema.
1001 Movies before you die 