Disc Reviews

Serpico Blu-ray Review

• 21st Feb 2014

The New York of crime and cop films of the late 1960s and 1970s seems a million miles from the New York of today. Today New York, Manhattan and some of Brooklyn at any rate are very safe, but back in the 1970s, if the cinema of the period is to be believed it was a place riddled with crime. One of the clichés is that of littered derelict streets with lawlessness, vagrancy and such the like running the city. Think of the myriad of cop films: The French Connection (1971) and Fort Apache the Bronx (1980), the edginess of Taxi Driver (1976), Blaxploitation pictures, Kojak, far away from the WASP NYC of the Woody Allen films. Another film which fits the mould became a sub-genre leader and a surprise success: Serpico which was released in 1973 with police corruption at its heart. This was the first time police corruption was displayed so widely. Before Serpico the police were heroes with one or two bad apples, but here there were only one or two good apples.

Serpico is the true story of Frank Serpico, a New York Italian who all his life wanted to be a policeman and to help people. It is based off a then recent non-fiction book by Peter Maas telling the story of how Serpico exposed corruption in the NYPD. Not long after joining the force he comes across a force at all levels skimming off of gambling and black marketeers and such the like. As the 1960s goes on and gives way to the 70s this corruption gets worse with what seems like the majority of cops taking cut in drugs and hush money from crime lords. Things get very dangerous for Frank Serpico as he does not know who to trust short of a couple of close friends and associates – even the mayor’s office and the DA can’t be trusted and when he is transferred to narcotics Frank knows he is in a very dangerous position.

Al Pacino came into the film riding on the high of the both critically and commercially acclaimed role he had in The Godfather the previous year. Even though Copolla’s film was dominated by Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone, this was Pacino’s opportunity to shine (although he was also to also really demonstrate his acting talents in The Godfather Part II in 1974). Pacino has the performance of his career here in his first showcase role as he is given the reign to really make something of his character – and what a job he does, bringing to the role a real and genuine intensity in which the viewer is drawn into the stress and reality that Frank Serpico is experiencing. This was quite different from anything gone before in its portrayal of not just one or two corrupt officers but an entire force.

Even at 130 minutes the film feels compact with the real story taking place between the years 1959 – 1972 in what feels like an eternal 1972 with only the change of facial hair delineating time. Yet the sense of the time frame doesn’t seem important in the overall scheme, despite Frank going from clean cut Italian boy, to moustachioed Latino type and finally hippie as he works as an undercover cop. The film does have a political element to it to. This was the time of Watergate, of an unpopular war in Vietnam reaching its climax and a social revolution that was starting to turn sour. Serpico exposes that corruption – that if government is that corrupt what’s wrong other elements of society also. Added to this the layer of justifiable paranoia from a country that was paranoid about outside forces as well as its internal ones.

The extras on the disc are superb. Sometimes supporting documentaries can be a little too long to engage the interest, but here they are just right as producer Harry Bregman, the director, the late Sidney Lumet talk about how the film was realised from real to reel (although it is a shame that there are no pictures or images of the real Frank Serpico), their favourite scenes in the film and a making of documentary as well as a trailer and a stills gallery. This truly is the seminal film (arguably alongside The French Connection) of the gritty New York cop of the 1970s.

Chris Hick