Let's be realistic.

A different way of telling a story

The acting in this movie is really good.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

I really wanted to like this film and I knew nothing about the real cop Serpico. The film grabbed me when I saw a cop was shot. The scene with a cop running down to help the woman being brutalized by three men touched my heart. I was curious to know more about this character. But then I see Al Pacino dancing like a crazy man with other women at a party while his girlfriend was in that same party , it threw me out of the picture. He was not a sympathetic character anymore. The women in the film had no character development. They were in the story for no reason and we keep seeing Al Pacino as a crazy man fighting and screaming at fellow cops and other characters for no reason. I was not shown any internal struggle of this character to relate to him. Al Pacino did not act like a character which I can feel for. Martin Bergman in the commentary says that Al Pacino cares more about the character and less about story. I was shocked to know that. Probably Al Pacino kept doing whatever he felt was right in his head, about this character and the director just let him do whatever he wanted to do. All the other characters in the film were sincere with their roles and played their part well as cops except for Al Pacino. Its time that Al Pacino start caring about the story. Story is above the characters. In different scenes he looked like an addict and crazy man. I needed a reason to understand his character. Four stars for the beautiful cinematography and all the other actors in the film who were true to their acting. I feel sorry for the real cop Serpico who's struggles were not portrayed well by actor and director and who was told not to come to the set anymore.

SerpicoFocusing the whole feature i.e. of more than 2 hours only on a single character needs content and enough material to feed the audience which they easily provide with gripping screenplay to not let them wander off the screen even for a frame. Sidney Lemut still needs some better work on his execution and editing but that barely factors in here as the adaptation is way too smart and ahead of its time. Al Pacino is literally the heart of it; he beats fast and hard that helps it pumping and keeping the viewers alive for this glorious experience. Serpico breeds power, corruption, rage and politics on screen and successfully delivers it to the audience communicating through stellar performances like never before.

Lets be honest, a movie like this would have an insanely limited theatrical release and meet with negative reviews today. It has really gotten to that point.There is no action. The film is all about plot and characters and has a strong morality behind it. Modern viewers are going to find it boring.But, back in the day it was amazing.Back in the day movies like this could get made and people would spend money to actually see them. People would rave about them. Where the heck has society gone? Not only that but Pacino was allowed to act without given a screamed monologue...not that hearing Pacino scream and yell is a bad thing. I mean, I would feel disappointed if I paid to see one of his movies without it.But this is his early work, this was when he was developing himself as an actor and actually acting like different people, not just playing Al Pacino.So we get to see what Pacino could do before he was delegated to only play Pacino, which alone is a breath of fresh air.But we also get to see a problem with the police departments that we are still grappling with today, a problem that is even more in the headlines and one that wasn't solved despite Serpico's involvement.If nothing else it makes this film all the more illuminating.It's a movie frozen in time and, unfortunately, possibly doomed to be relevant far into the future.

Starring Al Pacino, Written by Peter Maas ( Book ), Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler ( Screenplay).Directed by Sydney Lumet.Reading some of the online reviews I realize I am probably in the minority but this wasn't my cup of tea.If it wasn't for the wonderful portrayal of the main character by Al Pacino I probably would have switched off the TV. He was terrific and carried the movie in my opinion. The plot was average and was full of padding and I was losing interest towards the end. Some of the acting was questionably wooden and the less that can be said about Serpico's live-in girlfriend the better!I think part of the problem is that it is considerably dated and is full of what are now considered Movie clichés so I probably would have enjoyed it more if I had watched it years ago.This is my first Al Pacino film and I thought he was incredible and the location filming was nostalgic.But on the whole I'll give it a 6/10