Prince Of The City (1981)

I bought Prince Of The City (1981) on iTunes last year and had always been putting it off because it was three hours long. Finally sat with it one night, director Sidney Lumet’s adaptation of the true story concerning Daniel Ciello (a career best performance by Treat Williams), a cocky narcotics squad detective who suffers fear and guilt, leading to him going undercover and informing on corruption across the department. Unlike Lumet’s earlier film on Serpico, Ciello is himself corrupt and he views his partners as family, continually telling the DA that he will never give them up, but caught in the bigger system where his testimony has political value. It’s a drama with a capital D, lots of scenes of New York guys in leather jackets and beige suits meeting in restaurants and apartments, with lines like “I know the law but the law doesn’t know the streets”, a definite must for any fan of New York crime movies. It’s a messy, melancholic story that observes the toll taken on Ciello as a major witness/informant on multiple cases while leaving it to the audience to pass judgement on him. Stacked with character actors like Jerry Orbach, Lance Henriksen, Bob Babalan, Lane Smith, James Tolkan, etc. Recommended