Il principe della città

Prince of the City is probably Sidney Lumet's best film to date. It is better then Serpico because it shows how dirty police corruption can get. Everyone is guilty in this film to some degree, there are no hero's. The viewer is taken inside the world of drug addicts and drug dealers, cops, lawyers and judges and is shown how easy it is for them to sell out and how sad it is when they do sell out. While "Prince of the City is a very long film and sometimes gets a little slowed down, it is a great story that is worth watching.

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'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!

Really, a stunning, unforgettable movie. This movie outlined very well the pitfalls, traps and emotional traumas associated with this type of betrayal. Although Danny Ciello wanted to cleanse himself and do the right thing, the path to that was to bring down the cop family, the close, tightly knit unit that he was part of. The tales he told had life-and-death implications for all involved, and may have been more than he bargained for.

Treat Williams was tremendous in this, although I must indicate my one complaint with the movie. That was in Williams' occasional overacting. The pain and emotion mostly was silently played out by Williams. The wrenching, emotional toll was plain to see and sense, even on a tough cop's stoic face. However, Williams occasionally went emotionally berserk, ostensibly to indicate the depth of his turmoil. This is a minor complaint, though. Actually his performance in this was astonishing.

There is a scene in the movie where Danny goes out in the night to help a junkie informant. The junkie is sick and desperate. He has nowhere else to turn except his cop handler, Danny. Danny finds himself in the position of having to get his informant his fix to keep him from getting violently sick. Danny finds himself running around in the rain and mud, ripping off another sick junkie of his stash. This junkie is desperate, too, and his cries dig deep into Danny as he rips him off. Later, when he takes the junkie home, his wife/girlfriend gets the drugs, disappears into the bathroom and takes them. When the junkie breaks into the bathroom, she tells him that the drugs were junk, and she flushed them down the toilet. The junkie is back where he started, and he begins beating her. Danny stands there, soaking wet and muddy, stunned by what is happening, and what he is out there doing. This simple scene is played out very well, and Treat Williams stands there with the revulsion and heartbreak played out on his face. This is not what he is supposed to be doing; this is not what he became a cop for.

A well-directed, well-acted movie.