Serpico

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington provides a dependable template, Capra's Christ returns in cheesecloth shirts and bucket hats. From graduation to exile, the eponymous rookie (Al Pacino) rattling inside the NYPD, "it's got its problems." His education begins early on with the etiquette of a free lunch at the deli and a suspect roughed up during interrogation, internal rot is recognized as deep and widespread. The bitter comedy of an honest laborer in a crooked organization is not lost on the "weirdo cop" who trades baby-faced uniform for plainclothes fuzz: "It's incredible, but I feel like a criminal 'cause I won't take money." Sidney Lumet's recurring theme of institutional corruption blooms in New Hollywood's paranoid grunge, a multiplicity of camera setups gives a thorough picture of the city in curt, skimming scenes. You have to be crazy or at least high to hope to break through the blue wall of silence, the crusade starts taking shape following reefer samples with the fellow detective (Tony Roberts), the captain (Biff McGuire) prescribes "patience and faith." The whistleblower's tunnel vision is keyed to Pacino's wiry energy, his Serpico is a jangly Holy Fool running into one dead end after another. A constellation of pungent mugs—Jack Kehoe's oily grin as a flatfoot ringleader, Norman Ornellas roaring at the wheel while barreling in reverse to shake down a perp, M. Emmet Walsh in the shadows and F. Murray Abraham with fedora and stogie. (By contrast, Barbara Eda-Young and Cornelia Sharpe as two of the protagonist's girlfriends fairly blend with the wallpaper in his pad.) "The reality is that we do not wash our own laundry, it just gets dirtier." Siegel's Madigan for the fateful bullet, Sturges' The Great McGinty for the downbeat punchline, Lumet's own Prince of the City for the revision. With John Randolph, Allan Rich, Edward Grover, Albert Henderson, Hank Garrett, Lewis J. Stadlen, Damien Leake, James Tolkan, Joseph Bova, Alan North, Bernard Barrow, Richard Foronjy, Tom Signorelli, and Kenneth McMillan.