Review of Serpico (1973) by Nate B — 24 Oct 2009

A culturally important film, as well as one of the best films of the 70s, and without a doubt: my favorite Al Pacino film. Lumet and Pacino have crafted one of the most emotionally complex crime dramas of all time: both being at the top of their game.

Al Pacino is Frank Serpico, who is fresh out of the police academy with but one thing on his agenda: to earn a detective badge and make New York a better place to live. The kicker here though, is that while Serpico battles drug dealers and petty criminals; his real threat comes from inside the legal system he so desperately fights for, as his most dangerous adversaries are the cops in his very prescient.

The whole system, as everyone from beat cops to Police chiefs, all the way up to politicians is corrupted. It?s a true root for the good guy story as we watch Serpico turn down bribes, getting set-up, double crossed, and eventually taking a bullet.

With very little support to help him out, along with the corruption continuing to rise, Serpico turns to a grand jury investigation going on, who want to help him expose the corruption, but who in return demand that Serpico put his own life on the line to execute their plan.

A young Pacino is giving his best performance here, with all the established Pacino roles here: the pissed as hell, the not often seen humorous side, the man in a relationship roll, plus the best part of his character: his cool counterculture side that sets him apart from pretty much every other cop.

In so by combining all these traits into one role, he has created for me, one of the most quietly captivating performances ever. Al Pacino is just awesome: He at one point goes undercover (as he does many times in the film) as a Hasidic Jew, you don?t see the stake out or anything.

You just merely see Serpico returning to the station walking past the front desk cop, who is looking at him with strange bewilderment at the lengths to which Serpico will go to do his job. The scene is altogether funny, as it fits perfectly into the film, breaking up all the drama for a moment.

So in short: If you call yourself an Al Pacino fan and have never seen this, then you haven?t seen anything yet and for everyone else that likes under your skin crime dramas of the finest kind, you need to see this time tested masterpiece of early New York cinema.

A Classic.