O Príncipe da Cidade

he middle part of Lumet's free trilogy (Serpico, toto and Q&A) about fighting against corruption in the police. This time freely based on career of Robert Leuci, a well-known corrupt cop and squealer, who once ruined the entire New York anti-drug department and made a career at old age as an author of decent harsh crimes books and as a professional film consultant. The film adaptation of "his" life story is, thanks to this, an rather slow, detailed and realistic view of the drama, kind of "traitor of the loved ones". Despite the fact that it starts out as a stylish dirty crime story, this line ends (too) soon for logical reasons. It becomes a personal drama and in the end a procedural film of years of bureaucratic machine with convictions and interrogations. Thus, even though there are legitimate objections to how the whole story is built, I can´t deny that it works. And works perfectly. But there is another fundamental problem, namely Treat Williams in the lead role. e is suitable for a certain type of role, but a complex role of once macho, who ruled the whole districts and who was really good at making the right friends with mafia, junkies, drug dealers, prostitutes, colleagues, his boss etc. and being torn apart from the inside, self-pity rat who everyone look down to, including the loved ones, former and current colleague, mafia and most of all he doesn´t respect himself. He´s just not a good fit for this kind of role. Which is even more obvious because everyone else in the movie is absolutely excellent. What makes it even worse is the fact that the script offers him every ten minutes really grateful, “Oscar aspiring scene", when he is to "run amok and collapse in Al-Pacino style", moralize and scold everyone. And this is exactly where he completely fails. It´s not entirely embarrassing or ridiculous, but the fact that this actor whose job was to perform such a nice role let every one overshadow him, clearly required a lot of (I don´t mean is as a compliment) effort. However, it doesn´t change the fact that this movie is amazingly shot and that it provides a fascinating insight into the averted side of the fight against drugs. (09/09/2017)