Il principe della città

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.

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.

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.

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.

Much has been made of this film's brilliance and how it was glaringly ignored at that year's Oscars. It richly deserved the awards it never received. Its realistic, gritty feel comes from the fact that the movie was lifted straight from the book, with only name changes. The viewer is drawn into the unraveling world of a narcotics' policeman as he recoils in disgust from what he does to maintain his squad's phenomenally high arrest rate, i.e., stealing, bribing, corrupting themselves to nail the corrupt. Cielo first targets people far from him but then the circle tightens until he fingers his own men. For a cop to rat on fellow cops is a deeply ingrained anomaly, an affront to the ties that bind the police in a brotherhood deeper than blood. The direction is great, the dialog heavily laced with coarse language that deepens the realism, and the acting is fantastic. Treat Williams never again received a role nor gave a performance that approached the stellar proportions of this one. Jerry Orbach is so immersed in his part that Dick Wolf cast him as a homicide detective for Law & Order based on seeing his acting in this movie. All of the characters are three-dimensional, human and evoke emotions. Some are admirable, others pitiful, some are despicable. Though long, Prince of the City is never boring, and it leaves its moral dilemmas largely unanswered, letting the viewer sort out who did the right thing. This film was made by Sidney Lumet as an apology to the NYPD for his hatchet job in Serpico. It succeeds in more ways than mere atonement; this movie is superior to its predecessor in many ways and was inexcusably blown off at that year's Academy Awards. Still powerful and has aged well, even if Treat Williams and Lumet haven't.