SERPICO (1973)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Crime / Drama

Director: Sidney Lumet

Cast: Al Pacino / Tony Roberts / Barbara Eda-Young

Plot

The true story of Frank Serpico, an honest cop who put his life on the line to expose the rampant practice of extortion, graft, and cover-ups in the New York City Police Department.

What I Liked

“Serpico” is a perfect illustration of why the 1970s is my favorite decade for American filmmaking.  It is far from the best American film made during the seventies, yet is so much better than most films from any other decade.  Director Sidney Lumet (also responsible for other classics from the decade like “Network” and “Dog Day Afternoon”) was the perfect choice to direct this film for his mastery of producing a palpable immediacy in his films that nevertheless feels wholly realistic and natural to the story.  While always riveting and intense, his films feature hardly a second of flash or contrivance.  The settings, clothing, camerawork, and acting all serve the purpose of bringing the viewer right in to the events on screen by making those events feel intensely true-to-life.  The clothes, scenery, and characters all seem imperfectly authentic.  And that’s what I love about seventies filmmaking.  None of the sentimentality or melodrama of the films made in the first half of the century.  None of the stylized shock value of the late ‘60s filmmakers.  Nor is there the overly-processed, overly-slick, larger-than-life productions that came in the 1980s and afterwards.  Just honest filmmaking, free of pretention and self-indulgence.

Pacino is of course best known for his multi-faceted portrayal of Michael Corleone in the Godfather films, the first of which appeared a year before “Serpico.”  And rightly so.  If this performance doesn’t quite live up to that one, it is still a consummate acting job providing a clear sense of the character’s idiosyncratic individualism while still making him a regular joe to which the masses can relate.  Michael Corleone displayed Pacino’s talent at subtlety and understatement, while Frank Serpico allowed him to burst with visible passion.

What I Disliked

It can be said that Pacino may have been a bit too indulgent with this role.  There are several scenes where he is purely a screaming asshole, not likable in anyway.  This is probably just an accurate portrayal of a man whose life is fraught with paranoia and secrets falling apart emotionally.  Still, a few of the scenes feel more like an actor showing off than they do like a real man dealing with a difficult situation.  Thankfully, those moments are extremely rare and Pacino is otherwise terrific.

Frank Serpico’s two romantic relationships in the film are given so little development that it might have been better to leave them out entirely.  The first, with a fun-loving dancer played by Cornelia Sharpe, clearly exists in the film as a means to illustrate Serpico’s quirky, personable side, but otherwise has no bearing on the overall plot.  The second, with a nurse played by Barbara Eda-Young, seems to be more of a months-long screaming match rather than a romance.  This relationship is present for the sole purpose of providing the viewer a glimpse at how the stress and paranoia was ruining Serpico’s peace of mind.  However, since we’re never really given the sense that this relationship was ever positive to begin with, we never feel anything’s been lost when it eventually ends.  Eda-Young’s lackluster acting doesn’t help; it’s almost as though she thinks she’s still rehearsing for the part and not actually in front of a rolling camera.

Most Memorable Scene

Outside of the level of corruption it documents (and nowadays that’s old news too), nothing about “Serpico” will necessarily blow your mind.  But it is not meant to be an awe-inspiring sort of film.  In a way, that no scene sticks out predominately over any other is a compliment to Lumet’s self-restraint.  The film has a flowing progression where each scene leads smoothly to another while the emotional content becomes ever more extreme without the viewer consciously noticing.  I have no favorite scene, nor a most memorable one.  I’ll simply say that the aspect of the film that most stands out for me is the settings.  Clearly shot on location, the dirty streets, claustrophobic apartment buildings, and dingy precinct houses have a documentary-like realism that lends credibility to the drama on screen.

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5