Serpico (1973)

There are films that feel polished but unremarkable, the kind you half-forget by the time you've found your coat, and then there are films that feel like they've been ripped from somewhere real and still raw. Serpico, released in 1973, sits firmly in the second category. It tells the story of Frank Serpico, a real New York City police officer who spent years documenting and reporting the widespread bribery and corruption running through the NYPD, only to find himself increasingly isolated, threatened, and in genuine physical danger because of it. The case eventually contributed to the formation of the Knapp Commission, a major public inquiry into police corruption in New York, making the film not just a personal drama but a document of a genuine institutional reckoning. For audiences in 1973, with Watergate unfolding in real time, a story about one honest man standing against a corrupt system had a particular kind of charge to it.

The film was directed by Sidney Lumet, who had by that point already established himself as one of the most reliable and socially alert directors working in American cinema. If you want a sense of what Lumet could do with a morally loaded scenario and a single room, his early career landmark 12 Angry Men is well worth your time, and he would return to similarly gritty New York territory just two years after Serpico with Dog Day Afternoon. Here, Lumet keeps things grounded and unglamorous, shooting on location around New York in a way that gives the film a documentary texture, almost as though the camera is just keeping up with events rather than staging them. The production was backed by Dino De Laurentiis's company alongside Artists Entertainment Complex, and the script was adapted by Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler from Peter Maas's biography of Serpico, published the year before the film came out.

At the centre of all of it is Al Pacino, who was still in the early years of a career that was already turning heads (this came out the same year as Scarecrow, in which he also starred). Pacino plays Serpico across roughly a decade of his life, and the physical transformation alone, from fresh-faced recruit to bearded, weary near-recluse, is considerable. The supporting cast includes John Randolph, Jack Kehoe, Biff McGuire, and Barbara Eda-Young, filling out a world of colleagues, superiors, and personal relationships that all eventually bend under the pressure of what Serpico is doing. The film runs at 129 minutes, long enough to let you feel the slow accumulation of that pressure rather than simply being told about it.

One of Al Pacino's greatest roles. Based on a true story of NY Police corruption. Al Pacino is masterful in this role. Absolutely captivating and powerful performance. It shakes you to the core to think about how corrupt the police were back then (and probably not much has changed).

I find it hard to argue with any of that. What stays with me is how the film refuses to make Serpico's honesty look easy or cost-free, which is what keeps it from tipping into simple heroism. It's an uncomfortable watch in the best sense, the sort of film that leaves a residue. If the crime genre is something you come back to regularly, it's worth thinking about where this one sits in that tradition, because films like Little Caesar were building the grammar of crime cinema decades earlier, and yet Serpico still manages to feel like something different from all of that. Less myth, more bruise.

Rating: ★★★★½  | Year: 1973  | Watched: 2025-06-27

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Trailer

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Sidney Lumet: Dog Day Afternoon (1975) · 12 Angry Men (1957)
More with Al Pacino: Scent of a Woman (1992) · Cruising (1980) · Insomnia (2002) · Scarecrow (1973)
More from the 1970s: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Here and Elsewhere (1976) · Italianamerican (1974) · Punishment Park (1971)
More crime: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Angst (1983) · Stolen Face (1952) · Cairo Station (1958)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)