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.
Review of Prince of the City
