Review of Serpico (1973) by Aodhan R — 07 Feb 2015

In 1973, in his post-Godfather movie, Al Pacino carries a badge as police detective Frank Serpico, of the New York Police Department. The story centres around the life of Serpico from his time in the police department, in the B.C.I to his much larger and active involvement in the Seventh Division. It also focuses heavily on how affected he is by police corruption and the strain it puts on him and his relationship with his girlfriend.

Pacino delivers a splendid performance as always, and his portrayal of Serpico arouses a lot of questions as he is a unique and strange character, rarely seen in anything else.

Despite an undoubtedly good performance from Pacino, 'Serpico' goes down the road of clichés when there's hardly any interesting characters to approve of, due to an excessive lacking of character development. Most of the characters are just there to act hostile towards Serpico himself, whom is a very strange cop, who acts against police corruption and the assaulting of criminals within the department. I guess that's a decent way to put it (who would disagree?), but it becomes clichéd and boring, and the only real attention is the fine peformance of Pacino - and even the story becomes a bit confusing to follow, due to all of this, but it's a fact-based movie about 'A man's story within the New York Police Department.' It's not the worst, but near enough one of the best.