Prince of the City

Yes, Treat Williams was not as good an actor as Al Pacino in Serpico (the film that made Pacino's career). But Sidney Lumet was a better director than the vast majority of cop film directors, and the dialogue was better written for this movie than 99% of the cop films I have ever seen. The supporting actors are the strength of this movie. There must have been at least a dozen stellar performances from most of the cast involved in a secondary role. Lindsay Crouse was very good on the distaff side, but this is primarily a man's film.

To be more precise, it is not just a cop's film, but is a cautionary tale for most of us who had graduated college and tried to be honest, forthright, truthful, have integrity, and perform in a professional manner, regardless of our chosen field.

The world has a way of eroding all of those things, bit by bit over a long period of time. Chasing money becomes more important than some of those lofty principles, as they do not put food on the table. Sometimes they do, or if you are Jesus, you can create your own loaves and fishes, but the rest of us are not Jesus.

There is great empathy for Danny Ciello from most viewers; I knew I felt sorry for him. However, a prosecuting attorney makes a point about if any arm of the law is corrupt, then the whole system suffers. Corruption, however, does not start with the police, or teachers, or hospital workers or accountants or any other hard-working person. Corruption starts at the top of the food chain and works it way down. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Lumet does a great job with the direction and this is a film that is not to be missed if you want a real piece of New York City reality in the late 1970s.

A few years after this was in the theaters, it was shown on TV over two nights. I remember reading that a significant amount of footage that had been cut for the theatrical version would be restored for the TV showing. That piqued my curiosity, so I watched -- and was completely blown away.

But what amazed me the most was that I couldn't spot one scene that could be taken out of the movie without seriously compromising it. Since I knew it had been cut and restored, I was pointedly looking for stand-alone scenes that only fleshed out the characters but weren't integral to the extremely complex storyline. There weren't any. Every single scene contained some important bit of information that cast light on and helped make sense of something elsewhere in the movie.

Ever since then, I've been patiently waiting for this director's cut to show up on VHS, LD, or DVD -- and refusing to watch the theatrical cut! It's been 15 years and I'm still waiting. But I would certainly think that eventually this will come out on DVD, and we can al hope and pray that it will do so in the full version.

I've been a defense lawyer in NYC for the past 35 yars. I have more than a passing familiarity with some of the actual trials and appeals generated by Ciello's (Treat Williams' character) testimony. More broadly, I can attest to the accuracy of the film's depiction of the agonies, doubts, remorse and dreads of the turncoat/informant-witness in criminal cases. No film has developed this theme - a very common one in federal criminal trials, but one never visible to the public - as thoroughly as this film. "Goodfellas" devoted a few minutes to this, but only to the witness protection aspect after Henry Hill decided to testify, and never developed the broader, morally ambiguos dimensions of becoming an informer who turns on former close associates.

Nor has any other film more accurately revealed the way government prosecutors deal with their informants, which is not always pretty; often prosecutors treat their informers in ways that paralell the way Ciello treated his junkie informers on the street - he supplied them with drugs when he needed them, but he also abused, ignored or took advantage of their vulnerabilities when the need suited him.

The film also displayed, though it did not emphasize, another aspect of the prosecutor/informant relationship: willful blindness to likely perjury. Here, when Ciello offers to cooperate, prosecutors sternly insist that he tell the whole truth, not just about the crimes committed by others but by Ciello himself. They want to be assured of this not only because legal ethics demand it, but because their cases can fall apart if the defense later uncovers and reveals nasty secrets about the informant to the trial jury to undermine the informant's credibility. Here, as in the actual case, Ciello insisted that he had committed "only three" crimes while a NYPD detective. While prosecutors sensed, but did not actually know, right from the start that this was highly unlikely, and that Ciello was in fact concealing both the number and severity of his past misdeeds, they preferred not to inquire too deeply, and did little independent investigation of Ciello's prior misconduct on the force ("willful blindness"). That came back to haunt them, because after the trials, the defense lawyers dug up many of Ciello's hitherto unrevealed criminal deeds, and severely damaged his credibility, almost fatally imperiling the convictions his testimony had been so helpful in procuring. This film portrays not only the moral dilemma of the informant, but the moral dilemma of prosecutors, who desperately need informants to build their cases, but who have mixed feelings about learning too much about their unsavory pasts.

By the way, the detective played by Jerry Orbach has been a private investigator for the past 20 years or so (though never convicted, he was discharged from the police force); I've hired him, and he is terrific!!

I remember watching this many years ago, probably on TV, soon after it came out. It's always been on my mind and I watched it again over the last two evenings. I am just in awe of the powerful story, great acting and the gritty setting of this amazing film. To this day, I cannot believe Sidney Lumet never won an Oscar for best director for all the other great films of his: Twelve Angry Men, Serpico, Network, Dog Day Afternoon, and this masterpiece. With no special effects, no big name actors, no sex, Mr. Lumet has me glued to the screen for nearly three hours. I agree with the other reviewer that this is in the class of the great ones like the Godfather, On the Waterfront, Raging Bull, along with the French Connection, and Serpico. It's a shame that only a minuscule percentage of the IMDb population even has heard or seen films like these from this era, where films were truly an art form, rather than the commercial vehicle that they have become today.

Treat Williams plays a corrupt New York narcotics detective who tries to redeem himself by volunteering to go undercover on the force to weed out other corrupt policeman only to find himself facing an increasingly difficult series of moral dilemmas involving his former partners. This intelligent film is possibly the best cop film ever made. Treat Williams delivers the best performance of his career although the excellent supporting cast, Jerry Orbach, in particular, comes very close to stealing the movie right out from under him. Williams is so good here that you can't believe he is the same guy who later appeared in "Dead Heat." (What happened?) Director Sidney Lumet, who also co-wrote the insightful, penetrating script with Jay Presson Allen, was never better. He does such a great job that you can't believe he's the same guy who directed "Family Business." (What happened?) The film is long, but you never lose interest. A must see.