Serpico
Al Pacino’s winning streak in the early to mid 1970s has long been the stuff of legend, one smash hit after another (complete with the requisite Oscar nominations for Pacino himself) but out of all these triumphs, while it might be easy to pick the most popular (Godfather 1 and 2), picking the most underrated one is a somewhat tougher task. Certainly Pacino himself has reportedly said in interviews what his own personal pick is: this 1973 release that saw him take on the role of the real life Frank Serpico, then a very recent case at the time (as was Dog Day Afternoon which came later in the streak) and in many ways a bane of contention for law enforcement nationwide due to the indisputable revelation that in certain major cities, the corrupt, dirty cops may very well outnumber the good ones. In the capable hands of director Sidney Lumet, the approach to the material is as straightforward as one can get and not at all like the three ring circus of unbelievably fantastic acting that would be Lumet’s own later triumph in 1975’s Network. Here the focus is squarely on Pacino as Serpico almost to the point of suffocation (as befitting the material) and while other supporting players weave in and out of the narrative, Pacino himself is pretty much there in every scene playing a guy who joins the police force with high idealistic intentions, truly believing in his heart that a good, honest cop can rise right to the top of the ranks simply through honesty and integrity. How wrong he is especially early on in his law enforcement career when he notices the local deli giving him and his partner a free meal while he’s told that the department makes special allowances for the owner in exchange and then when busting some black youths for raping a woman, observing one of his brother officers beating the crap out of one of them for little more reason than he obviously enjoys it. Eventually he at least earns the right to go about his job as a plainclothes cop and with it, the right to dress and alter his appearance in any way that he sees fit and it is here that we realize that Serpico is the ultimate walking contradiction, a cop who is also a full blown hippie flower child of the 60s as well, growing his hair long and his beard bushy, sporting an earring not to mention having a fashion sense that makes him look ready for the front row at Woodstock. The other cops see his appearance but they also know that Serpico looking like this makes him more suitable for undercover work, even as the crux of it is while all of the other cops are basically running exortion rackets on the various NYC criminals and becoming all the richer because of it, Serpico refuses to accept any “bonus money” for the various busts that they make, drawing the ire of almost everyone he works with as to whether or not he can be trusted. And truthfully he cannot, since he is not able to stomach the idea of the NYPD being just another form of organized crime protected and nurtured by the establishment and when he makes his initial attempts at speaking out, he finds himself patted on the head for doing so and is told to “stay in place” so that he can learn more information to be passed on, all while not even knowing if he can actually TRUST these same higher ups to keep their own mouths shut when it comes to his own personal safety. The problem is that his fellow cops ARE learning about his whistleblowing attempts and daily doses of frisking, tough talk and even a couple of lame attempts to discredit him (including accusing him of being a homosexual when he is portrayed as having been in relationships with two good looking women) become the normal routine. His legitimate allies are few and far between, with one of them being connected enough that he has meetings set up for him with The Mayor’s office and The New York Times. The irony through all of this is that Serpico seems to really believe that once the dust settles from all of these corruption allegations, he can just go back to being an ordinary cop and continue rising through the ranks even as the dirty cops themselves seem reluctant to take any sort of real shot at him, preferring instead to purposely place him into ever more dangerous situations hoping that some lowlife criminal will do the dirty work for them. The story coming out of this is in Pacino’s performance as a man going through a situation of unimaginable tension over a period of YEARS and refusing to wither, even as the situation makes him so hard to deal with that his girlfriends decide to up and leave him instead of putting up with his ticking timebomb demeanor and even a number of his own allies express their doubts to him that maybe he’s become a little bit too preoccupied with exposing corruption that’s always been there and which they believe always will be. But that’s perhaps the real moral of the story here is in the very concept of corruption no matter where it might be rooted whether it be in law enforcement, politics or even your local community and Serpico’s story can be seen as a mere microcosm of a much bigger picture, a scenario where the highest authorities don’t want to hear about such things (because they benefit off of it too) and the lower level guys are just happy to have some extra spending money in their pocket because it feels good to have it. But in Frank Serpico’s case, he was willing to wage a literal one man war against the entire system over this, a war he won to some extent (after his testimony new means of oversight were installed with the NYPD) but it also cost him dearly, leaving him nearly disabled after taking a bullet in the line of duty from a drug dealer for whom the other cops had backed off from helping him with, getting a commendation for his efforts, but yet still resigning from the force and selling the movie rights to his story before spending time living in Switzerland, The Netherlands and finally on a farm in upstate New York. Pacino had managed to get Serpico to spend an extensive amount of time with him in order to help with his preparation, but when Serpico apparently felt emboldened enough about Pacino’s potential in playing him that he offered to serve as an on set consultant during the filming, Lumet would tell him no on the pretense that it would be a distraction. Just as well though, since Pacino manages to carry this whole thing as greatly as possible, working with mostly B level actors (and a couple of guys who would go on to achieve stardom in their own right) which is ideal since nobody is really allowed to break out and steal the movie away from him. While Serpico himself would become synonymous with exposing a deep rooted corruption that never really went away but rather just became less conspicuous, Pacino would score another Oscar nomination to place onto his empty shelf (not managing to win until 1992 for the grossly overrated Scent Of A Woman) and continue his incredible run at that time as this movie would wind up being filed into the heavily dramatic category that if not for the talent and charisma of its main star would probably be pretty hard to watch, instead becoming an intense and compelling parable about the dangers of being a boy scout in an increasingly dangerous and hostile world…
8/10