Reframe: Serpico

Few actors in the history of cinema have had a hot streak like Al Pacino did from 1971 to 1979. Starting with his breakthrough as a junkie in The Panic at Needle Park through And Justice For All, Pacino had a nearly perfect stretch (we’ll give him a mulligan for 1977’s Bobby Deerfield). While The Godfather made him an instant legend in 1972, Pacino’s best work was not limited to Coppola’s two gangster classics—there was also the criminally underseen hobo drama Scarecrow (1973) in which he and Gene Hackman trade their genius back and forth, and, what I consider to be Pacino’s greatest performance, Dog Day Afternoon (1975), for the legendary director Sidney Lumet. 

Two years before Dog Day (the same year Scarecrow was released—what a year!) Lumet and Pacino teamed up for the first time to tell the true-life story of Frank Serpico, a New York City police officer whose ideas changed inner-city policing forever, but because he would not accept bribes became an outcast among his brethren in blue. The consequences of Serpico’s efforts to remain a clean cop led to tragic results that still register as relevant in modern day policing.

Serpico is the first of four films Sidney Lumet made that touched on the subject of police corruption; 1981’s epic Prince of the City came next, then the hard-boiled-as-hell Q&A in 1990, followed by the solid, undervalued Night Falls in Manhattan closing out the foursome in 1996. 

As fine as all of these films are, Serpico is easily the best of the bunch—in large part because, however strong the leads were in the other three (Treat Williams in Prince of the City, Nick Nolte in Q&A, and Andy Garcia in Night Falls), none of them could touch peak-level Pacino. And Serpico is peak-level Pacino.

In 1973, Pacino was still a fresh face, full of the ability to surprise audiences from film to film. No matter how great an actor is, at a certain point in their careers, their mannerisms and persona can make it hard to not see the actor before the character. DeNiro, Streep, Washington—almost any great actor you want to name will at some point be overshadowed by their iconography.

That shadow of fame had not eclipsed Pacino when he took on the role of Frank Serpico. Even now, nearly 50 years hence, watching Pacino in Serpico feels like a revelation.

The film opens with tragedy, as a badly wounded Frank Serpico is rushed to the hospital by fellow officers who clearly have mixed feelings on his prospects for survival. Lumet then takes us back to the beginning of Frank’s story to show a young, clean-cut Serpico graduating from the police academy, a smile on his face and eyes beaming with hope and positivity.

Due to Lumet’s decision to begin with the end, we know that smile and hope will be short-lived. Before long, Frank sees the rank yet normalized corruption on the force in the form of bribes, shakedowns, and monthly “tithes” from businesses who want to double park on delivery day. At first Serpico (who, as depicted by the film, was a “true believer” in the potential good of the police force) looks the other way as everyone in his precinct lines their pockets.

Everyone but him—and therein lies the rub. Because, as one of his fellow officers says, “Who can trust a cop who don’t take money?”

The trouble for Serpico is that staying clean is quite possibly more dangerous than fighting crime in the streets. As is pointed out to him, another cop wouldn’t have to shoot him in the back to get him killed. All they’d have to do is not have his back when he needs it.

Part of Lumet and Pacino’s genius is how they show Serpico in the first half of the film: ebulliently playing with a boy around an open fire hydrant, dancing like a madman at a party, and buying a sheepdog off the street on the spur of the moment. Away from the job, he went by the name “Paco,” probably just because he liked it. Not only does he have the sheepdog as a pet, but he also has a parrot, and a mouse. It is his eccentricities and capacity for joy shown early in the film that make his stress, as the weight and danger of his situation presses down on him, all the more palpable. The risk that Serpico takes by going to work every day starts to visibly break him down.

When I rewatched the film to write this piece, I picked up something I hadn’t before: Serpico’s unconventional nature as a man also made him a great forward-thinking cop. To blend into the neighborhoods where he worked, Serpico grew out his hair and beard, and dressed like the people who lived in the area. As he points out in the film, undercover cops could be spotted a mile away thanks to the white socks and black shoes they all wore. To Serpico, undercover cops were just wearing a uniform of a different kind.

Serpico was so far ahead of his time that today’s policing could take notes from the film on how to infiltrate, interrogate, and investigate criminals. Serpico wasn’t just showing up his fellow officers by not taking bribes, he was also doing it by being a better cop than all of them.

Frank does find the occasional good cop who is willing to stretch out their neck a bit for him, but they either lack the juice or the fortitude to take it to the bridge. As Serpico attempts to take his concerns up the ladder and expose the corruption on the force, he finds that the ladder only gets longer and leads to nowhere. When Serpico goes to outside agencies, and finally the press, he is told by an angry higher-up that the force “washes its own laundry.” A raging Serpico replies, “We don’t wash our laundry around here, it just gets dirtier!” It’s one of those great, sudden bursts of anger that Pacino does just about better than anyone.

While Serpico is an incredibly taut and exciting film, it’s also heartbreaking. In the last half of the film we watch Frank become more volatile and run off his supportive girlfriend. He makes too much noise on the job and ends up being transferred to narcotics where he is badly wounded as his fellow cops leave him in the lurch in what is an incredibly disturbing scene.

As Serpico lies in his hospital bed with a bullet hole in his face, he finally breaks. It’s a brief sequence, but Pacino invests it with so much hurt, I can barely stand to think about it.

The intolerable truth is that Frank Serpico was a righteous man whose talents and honesty paid him no dividends. He should have received accommodations and promotions, instead he was shot in the face.

The film closes with a broken Serpico sitting on a bench, no longer a cop, with only his sheep dog next to him for company. He looks like the loneliest person in the world, and I’ll be damned if it’s not one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen.