Prince of the City

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.

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.

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!!

You know the gag, "Behind the tinsel and glitter of Hollywood, there's a lot more tinsel and glitter." Well behind the filth and corruption of the so called "War On Drugs", there's a lot more filth and corruption. When I was a young and naive budding trumpet player, I idolized a trumpet player by the name of Red Rodney. He played with Charley Parker. That's like starting for the Yankees. Like Parker he became addicted to heroin. To me he was royalty. The drug life for him was one of incarceration and constant police surveillance. One day he said a common occurance during an arrest was for the police to take and keep any money he had, and take AND SELL THE DRUGS THEY CONFISCATED! After seeing this movie do you have any doubts? I saw Sidney Lumet give a talk about his career. After the talk was over, I went up and asked him how could the Ciello character even dream about talking to the Feds, knowing that his entire operation was mired in illegal hanky panky. Lumet says he asked Bob Leucci, the real life Danny Ciello, and he told Lumet to this day he still can't truly explain it. Where did Treat Williams, a competant actor up till this movie summon the greatness he reaches. The disintegration from a cocky cop who thinks he owns New York City, to a weasel who causes suicide and ruin for his closest buddies and their families is heartbreaking. The virtuoso cast and Williams probably said after seeing the film, "How the hell can we top this?" You want to know something? THEY NEVER HAVE! An American classic, not to be missed!