In the sixties and early seventies, corruption was rampant in the New York City Police Department. You couldn’t take five steps without someone offering you part of the take or threatening to cut your tongue off if you didn’t. One man stood alone against his corrupt comrades, one man dared to dream of a police force that didn’t put their own greed before the needs of the people, one man refused to stand idly by the grimy underbelly of police work. And that man’s name was Frank Serpico: a man with one heck of a cool last name. I mean, just say it out loud in a hushed whisper. Serpico. Feel that chill run up your spine? Well you should. And it isn’t one of those dumb cool last names where they’re trying too hard like Darkhammer or Shadowcrotch. It’s a shame no one ever made a movie about this guy starring Al Pacino. Cough.
In case you’re confused about the point, Frank Serpico was a real cop who revealed massive corruption in the NYPD during his tenure as a cop in the nineteen-sixties. He tried fixing the system quietly at first, but due to corruption at the highest level, he was forced to reveal his story to the world in 1972. The events of the film follow Serpico’s police career through several departments as he tries to do his job in a broken system that both fears and despises him. And how dare he! How dare he try to, you know, actually do his job! What a scoundrel. Seriously though, by the way this film paints, it all the corrupt cops ever did was collect protection and harass ethnicities. I don’t doubt they were bad cops, but surely they must’ve done other things besides being complete horseflickers. Or maybe that is all they ever did. It would explain the hell out of everything going on in The Warriors.
Like I said before, Al Pacino stars as the idealistic Frank Serpico and completely dominates the role, as he is known to do. He even got an Oscar nomination for it, but lost to the late Jack Lemmon, the star of Grumpy Old Men and its smash-hit sequel Grumpier Old Men. Pacino’s portrayal of Serpico reminds me of a trapped animal, full of fear, yet dangerous when provoked. In one scene, when the frustration of the job reaches a breaking point and he’s put face-to-face with a cocky drug dealer who thinks he’s untouchable because of the oodles of cash he pays the cops; Serpico breaks him. There is no other way to describe the savagery he puts on display in front his rotten partners to show he’s not going to let this scumbag walk. It’s an incredible scene that left me awestruck after I saw it. It’s just a shame that most of the movie isn’t like that.
No, Serpico goes for a more realistic approach and only treads into romanticism a few times. They really should have gone for more, though. Pacino was in the zone here, and watching him crack a few more crooked skulls would’ve been great. Although, I have a feeling this comes from my desire to see these people punished. You know those moments in a film, when there’s an unbearably smug jerk that prances around like he’s King Poop and only gets hit with a slap on the wrist for most part. Whenever I see one of those people, I want them brutalized before it’s all said and done. And that is why they exist; to fuel hatred in the audience stronger than anything they’ve ever felt. Where most films fail is with the pay-off. The arrogant jerkface never seems to fully get what should come to them. That is why that one scene I talked about before succeeds so well. Seeing that slimy toad get manhandled and then thrown into a cage with the rest of the trash was so satisfying, I may just name my first-born child after that scene. One day, Serpicoshowsasmugingratewhosboss Maciech will walk the Earth.
Despite my undying love for Serpico’s ability to tear through the confidence of arrogant pricks like a combine harvester through a Saltine cracker, there are some faults. First and foremost is how the movie opens. It opens with the single most annoying police siren I have ever heard. I get that the siren is supposed to be alarming, but good lord does this thing make a racket. Even a fire alarm would find that siren annoying. And it doesn’t help they keep switching between it and a scene that is quieter than an awkward silence at a Bar Mitzvah after some tells a Holocaust joke. It’s not a good way to open a movie. Another big problem is the editing and some of the plot structure. Let me give you an example with a series of scenes that happen in this order: Serpico gets some support to battle corruption; he arrives at home and embraces his girlfriend after telling her the good news; cut to a scene where the support back out of helping Serpico and he leaves disappointed. There is probably forty seconds between when Serpico gains some aid in his life and then it is dashed away. That caused some hellish emotional whiplash, and by “hellish emotional whiplash” I mean “indifferent confusion.” We go from “Yeah, Serpico is going to get some help!” to “Oh, okay, I guess not?” in about as much of time as it takes someone to throw their shoes out of a window and strike a mailman in the head from sheer emotional disorientation.
I would recommend seeing this film for that scene of smug backlash satisfaction alone, but Serpico has a lot more to offer, despite a few nitpicks.
