Panico a Needle Park

A year before Al Pacino got his career role as Michael Corleone in The Godfather he and Kitty Winn got great reviews as a pair of junkies in The Panic In Needle Park. This film is a brutal and realistic look at the New York's nasty world of the narcotics addict as seen through Pacino and Winn.

Even in this world romance can bloom even among these folks on the bottom most rung of society. Still the need for the needle overrules all, a fact that narcotics cop like Jesse Vint exploits to the max.

Richard Bright who plays Pacino's older brother who is a burglar by trade and not a junkie delivers a good performance. My one criticism of he Panic In Needle Park is Bright's willingness to take Pacino in on a job. Any good burglar wouldn't rust a junkie even if he was family.

The scenes showing the heroin use are brutally realistic. One scene that jolted me was the efforts to save Pacino from a hot shot dose of pure heroin. Done by his fellow narcotics peers without any professional medical help.

Not much has changed in the junkie world in the intervening half a century since Needle Park came out. The real tragedy of this film.

This is probably one of Al Pacino's best films. I would say that it is even better then "The Godfather" because you almost want to reach out and help the characters but you can't. They all have the same problem. That problem is heroin addiction and it has caused a multitude of problems in their lives. This is a great film. It is usually not shown on television (I did see it on PBS a few years ago but I think that was a rare exception) I think however, because of its realistic content most stations try not to air it. If you can find it on video I highly recommend it.

Sherman Square is in NYC on the West Side at the intersection of Broadway and 72nd Street. It is known as Needle Park for its heroin addicts. Petty criminal addict Bobby (Al Pacino) is a friend to artist Marco (Raul Julia). Helen (Kitty Winn) is in the hospital after a bad abortion from relations with Marco. She is homeless and looking to go back to Indiana. She moves in with Bobby and slowly drifts into the dark world of drugs.

This is very 70's. It's indie. It's grim and it's grimy. The two leads are compelling. It doesn't flinch away from the needle work. It's not pretty Hollywood but rather an ugly closeup vision. It is a bit slow and the plot meanders. There is a grinding inevitability to their predicament. It wallows in the gutter.

"The Panic in Needle Park" is an incredibly unpleasant film...which is what you'd expect about a film that centers around two heroin addicts living in New York. So, if you are looking for a film to make you smile or a good date film, do NOT see this movie! In fact, that is the biggest problem with the picture...most folks won't wanna see two people slowly destroying themselves. Most folks watch films to be entertained. Now I am NOT saying it's a bad film and it might be a good one to show teens, as it shows how wretched a life hooked on drugs can be...though there are a few more recent films which make drug use seem a lot more unpleasant, such as the brilliant but hard to watch "Requiem for a Dream".

The film has very little in the way of plot. It simply shows two addicts who are in love, Bobby and Helen (Al Pacino and Kitty Winn), as they slowly degenerate...sinking lower and lower and lower through the course of the movie. At first, Bobby is very glib...and fun to be with and Helen seems rather innocent. Naturally, this doesn't last and both sink deeper and deeper into their habit. Bobby claims he's a 'chipper' (a casual user who is not addicted) but after a while he's dealing and overdoses. Helen begins turning tricks to buy their next fix.

Unpleasant, to be sure, but mostly realistic. When they shot up, it looks real...and the language is street language...nasty and crude. But the only problem I saw is that both LOOKED healthy through the course of the film and the makeup could have been better...enabling them not only to act like addicts but to look more like them. Well made but I am strongly warning you...it's not a movie for kids or for the squeamish.

The Panic in Needle Park (1971)

Wow. This is as close as American Hollywood gets to cinema verite. The way it's filmed, the subject matter itself, and the acting by the whole cast, especially the two leading actors, is astonishing and gripping. Like many reality-based stories, this one lacks only a driving narrative thread. As disturbing and terrific as it is, it also gets slow, and could have been edited down with the same effect.

But less of it. By that I mean, if you can just settle into this world of 1970 heroin abuse in New York City, with close ups of shooting up and some very convincing rushes and rides, with squalor and hopelessness and indifference, with prostituting and stealing and a wide cast of people down and out, you'll want it to keep going. There is nothing quite like this movie, even as it lacks propulsion.

Al Pacino is so good, so convincing, as Bobby, you can almost picture the movie is a documentary and this slightly charming junkie is a real guy who was willing to be filmed. His girlfriend Helen played by Kitty Winn is also perfect, at first as a kind of tagalong who isn't comfortable with this world but who seems to have nowhere else to go so she sticks with Bobby. But she falls into the lifestyle, and her clean innocence is gradually worn down, almost before our eyes, and the two of them go through all the stages of addiction and desperation. They have no money, they sometimes have nowhere to live, but they stumble along, stealing or pulling tricks (sexual ones) to get their fix.

If anyone harbors any sense that heroin must be terrific, watch this movie. Even the famous euphoric rush is so internal it can't be appreciated, and people on their several hour high just seem to be sleepy all the time. And then the rest of their lives are absolute hell. I guess you don't care about everything else, so it may as well be hell, but from the outside, it's something to avoid.

And in that sense, the movie is perfect. It is so truthfully frank it's a masterpiece of some kind of cinema that we could use more of, but which is so raw and unappealing you can see why there isn't more. It's not a fun movie. And when it does get a little slow and repetitive you might even give up on it, or zone out like one of its characters. But watch at least part of it to appreciate what's been done. Here's the great Pacino in his first major role (and his second film), and Winn (also her second film) in an award winning performance.