Prince of the City (1981).
“I know the law. The law doesn’t know the streets.”
Directed by Sidney Lumet
Written by Jay Presson Allen and Sidney Lumet
Starring Treat Williams, Jerry Orbach, Richard Foronjy, and 123(!) other speaking parts
The Stage.
Prince of the City is based on the true story of New York police officer Robert Leuci, who was part of an ultra-corrupt special investigative unit for the narcotics bureau before turning federal informant.
The Review.
In 1973, Sidney Lumet directed Serpico, a film about whistleblower Frank Serpico and his struggle to out corruption from within the NYPD, but he always felt that the police in that film were too two-dimensional. This was his attempt to rectify that portrayal with a more nuanced look at people within the New York law enforcement machine.
Treat Williams, a guy I normally think of as the actor who plays the main character in a sequel that they couldn’t get the lead actor back for plays officer Danny Ciello, the SIU team leader despite being the youngest on the squad. He initially balks at the thought of becoming an informant when he’s first approached, but his conscience seems to get the best of him as he ventures out into the pouring rain one night to rob a junkie just to keep one of his other junkie informants straight. As he begins his journey as a rat, he makes one thing clear - he’s not going to work against any of his friends. Inevitably, that request gets more and more important as the investigation gets deeper and the circle of corruption gets smaller and smaller. Treat Williams does a lot of heavy lifting here as the lead. Unfortunately, his performance is highly uneven. When he’s more subdued, he’s actually really great, like in a scene in which he just watches a junkie slap around his lady because she did all of his drugs, knowing that if he butts in, it could mean bad things for his unit. When Danny gets amped up though, Williams overacts, sometimes to the point that it feels like he’s in a parody of a traditional cop film. It feels like he’s trying to do his best Pacino impression but mixed with Mr. Orange bleeding out in the back of a Cadillac. Pacino was the first person approached by Lumet for the lead in this film but turned it down due to it’s glaring similarities to the Serpico role he was nominated for just eight years before.
The rest of the cast is filled with late 70’s character actors and faces that you’re sure to recognize. Jerry Orbach plays Gus, Danny’s teammate and best friend. James Tolkan who you’d definitely recognize from Back to the Future and Top Gun plays George Polito, a bulldog working for the district attorney. He and Orbach have a powerhouse scene together and really displays both of their acting chops as Orbach literally flips a table over. Lance Henriksen is even here as a DA. There are a ton of speaking parts and everyone pulled their weight. Apparently Bruce Willis was an extra in the film but I was looking for him and didn’t see him anywhere.
This film feels epic - both in the time it spans within the story and it’s actual run time. The version I saw was a hair under three hours long, and apparently there was a four hour cut that ran on television in the mid-80’s. That didn’t surprise me - it felt like a TV show that was cut up and run as a movie and I definitely felt like it would be more fleshed out with more time and story to tell. I thought that the film was going to be about Danny’s struggle with becoming a rat or not, but it’s more about the consequences of his actions as time rolls by. It definitely feels like a realistic portrayal of what cops like Robert Leuci and Frank Serpico went through in the 70’s.
Watching Prince of the City in 2021 feels a bit like a game of emotional tug of war. On one hand, you can’t help but feel for the dirty cops who are starting to feel the squeeze, brothers in arms who have now had one of their own turn against them…but we’ve also seen so many examples of police not being held accountable in real life that the film’s message of, “Become a rat and you’re going to lose all of your friends, all of your respect, and might end up dead.” is a tough pill to swallow. And I guess that’s the point - Lumet’s excellent direction paints a picture using shades of grey, and positions each character to be a hero or a villain, depending on where you’re standing. And be forewarned, like many films that came out during this time, it’s filled with blatant racism and a general disregard for anyone who’s not a white male.
The End.
I’m surprised that this film never got more critical acclaim. It was nominated for one Oscar, best adapted screenplay, which it lost to On Golden Pond. It’s an epic that fits right into the same lane as films like Serpico, The Godfather, and Once Upon a Time in America, but for some reason never got the respect that it deserved. I think that anyone into gritty crime thrillers set in the five boroughs should check this film out.
Interestingly enough, the first attempt to tell this story was written by Brian DePalma who was working with Orion pictures. He had planned on having Robert DeNiro in the title role and I bet that if he was, we’d all have had this Blu-ray on our shelves. In an interesting twist of fate, when DePalma left the project, he picked up a little movie called Scarface…which was originally being developed by, you guessed it, Sidney Lumet.
