Prince of the City (1981)

Such a frustrating disappointment

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

For years I have heard that Sidney Lumet's "Prince Of The City" was a lost classic, a sleeper hit that was under-appreciated, a gem. I was very disappointed when I finally watched it- it's two hours and forty minutes of the most numbing, predictable, incessant over-acting and cringe-worthy clichés.The first forty minutes of the movie are good enough to suck you in, as Treat Williams plays a crooked, guilt-ridden cop who decides to cooperate with Internal Affairs to nab other crooked cops. "I won't rat on my partners," he vows, and the rest of the movie is spent watching him rat on his partners. Treat Williams' performance is embarrassing, and he spends the movie screaming tough-guy monologues too dumb for Acting 101. He genuinely looks clueless in certain parts of the movie, going over-the-top and practically begging for an Oscar nomination. It's pathetic.But it's not all his fault: Director Sidney Lumet makes this the kitchen sink of cop dramas. The movie features 22 lawyer characters that could have easily been condensed down to 3... there are too many cops and way too much dialogue, so much redundancy and so much extraneous information that by the second half of the movie I simply stopped keeping score. Williams' character is either incredibly naive or incredibly stupid if he believes he's going to get out of this situation cleanly... watching him rant and rave over the inevitabilities that come with turning state's evidence is infuriating: "How the HELL did I get here?!?"You volunteered.There is an odd homosexual undertone to the movie as the male characters all touch and hug one another far too long and far too often. The "protection" of Williams' character by Federal Agents is laughable: he's allowed to get out of the car in strange neighborhoods and approach crime lords and only then do the two sixty-something bodyguards run up to make sure no one tries to off him. Ridiculous. When the Uncle Nick character is whacked and his body discovered in a garbage can the actor clearly blinks and breathes- not once but twice during a sloppy, lingering shot. Subplots about Williams' brother and father are dropped without any resolution. Lindsay Crouse as Carla is in an entirely different movie, and her character makes little or no sense within the film we're watching. Characters have absurd and exaggerated names, with occasionally hilarious results: "We're gonna bring in Marinaro and Mayo" can easily be confused with mayonnaise and tomato sauce.I always like to find one good thing in a film and here it is Ron Karabatsos as DeBennedeto. The man is an absolute natural on screen, and one of those actors you never doubt for a split second as the character he's playing. It's a shame the direction lets him go to waste. Why Sidney Lumet didn't edit this film down to its core is beyond me... it's endless bureaucratic talking heads broken up by Treat's screeching and the promise of action that Never arrives.I think Sidney Lumet's "Dog Day Afternoon" is one of the greatest movies ever made- it's in my Top Twenty all-time. I also think "Serpico" is great, but I have to call 'em like I see 'em... "Prince Of The City" is a ponderous bore, a turgid slog through the most insignificant and grating aspects of police informants and legal technicalities. It's a disaster- like a movie stitched together from deleted scenes of the worst episodes of "Law & Order." At one point in the movie a federal attorney who we've never seen before- and will never see again- asks to speak to Treat Williams for a moment. Treat stands up and puts down his sandwich, but the lawyer assures him he can bring the sandwich with him for this particular meeting. He does, and neither the scene, the lawyer or the sandwich is ever mentioned again. For me this sums up the entire movie: too many details, too many characters, and way too much talking without any payoff at all.GRADE: D-

Lumet never made a bad film.I'm from the city (Philadelphia) so I can relate to the atmosphere here. And the story of a corrupt cop trying to do well without hurting his friends is a goldmine of possibilities.Treat's gamut of emotions, while seeming a tad OTT, were nothing but enhancement to his scenes. And the script itself was Oscar worthy.The load of supporting characters was great as well. Every one of them was a scene-stealer in their own right.The brotherhood of cops in just about any city probably goes though similar trips. The internal hell they go through was evident here. And the attorneys who claim to be their friends while secretly going their own way was a wake-up call as well.Best scene had said attorneys deciding whether to prosecute. That's when you saw who his real friends were.This is a cop drama with brilliant performances all around. Like most of Sid's films. Unlike most, this is lost in the shuffle. Time for a rediscovery.

"The law doesn't know the streets." But that doesn't mean that blurring the lines of the law is necessarily a good thing. Many law officials criticized this film during its release, perceiving it as glorifying its corrupt cops and vilifying the prosecutors who toiled to convict them. That is not what the film does. There are no black and white hats here. The story divides its characters into two sides, yes, but they are all struggling throughout to assert a concrete ideology within the oceanic gray area that is the law, and the good and evil it represents.The axis of the film is that Danny Ciello will not inform on his partners. Outside of his wife and kids, who know them like uncles, they are the only people who care about him. He will make the deal to talk about the involvement of narcotics in the corrupt activities of other cops, but not his dear and implicitly loyal friends. As we watch this movie, it is about narcs and New York City crime, but Sidney Lumet wants the underpinnings to be just as visible, how in a corrupt world, one cannot go straight without burning cherished bridges.Lumet gets to the heart of the war on drugs. And we see how it is, was, and will continue to be an utter failure. Addicts depend on the drug. Police depend on the continuation of the trade to uphold their status, and if not their status, their basic living condition. They know that if addicts are going to cooperate with them, they need their drugs. They know that if the courts are going to cooperate with them, drugs must be confiscated and accounted for. They know why they became cops, but they also know more than anyone else on their theoretical side of the law how miserable life is for a junkie. This is a lonely, dangerous and thankless dichotomy of a 24-7 job that's never finished, and if they want to skim a little drug money, that's their way of making it feel more worthwhile.Because Danny Ciello, based on New York cop Bob Leuci, who cooperated in a 1971 internal affairs investigation, is such a demanding and grueling role, almost always on screen in stressful, tiresome and emotional situations, I spent a good deal of the movie having trouble with the casting of Treat Williams. He was a no-name at the time, and that is what Lumet wanted, but there is something incongruously theatrical about Williams that is inconsistent with the rest of the actors. But he does convince us in the latter half of the film that he is falling to bits on account of his job, his testimony and the inextricable fate of the two that he will eventually have no choice but to rat on his friends.Prince of the City is a crime film, about cops, drug dealing, set in New York, and Lumet captures the gritty NYC streets of the 1970s that he encapsulated in Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon as if the era had never left. But it's not a violent film at all. There are many characters, hardly any of whom we really get to know beyond their legal and moral standpoints in the story. There is a later scene wherein a meeting of prosecutors debate whether or not a charge of perjury is justified. Its ethical issues are passionate and effective to us, but the verdict is a coin toss in the political climate. The movie answers none of the gray questions posed. It only threatens with possible scenarios.

Prince of The City - Sidney Lumet's overlong melodrama about a cop who turns informant is out on DVD.This 1981 Big Apple corruption flick features great performances by Jerry Orbach and Bob Balaban- but focuses around Treat Williams.The first third of the movie features most of the action-including a heart-breaking sequence where Treat helps a snitch score drugs(look for a cameo by a young Cynthia Nixon) and an action packed big score with his squad.But doom is looming in the air- hell the sound design in the first scene leaves no mistake that foreboding and bad tidings are in the offing. I have not seen this flick since it ran on TV in the 80s.The agonizing last 2 thirds of the movie is a mix of speeches and screaming about lies,morals and trust and it is an unrelenting parade of mental hopscotch as the protagonist tries to to protect his friend's from the long arm of the law and his testimony.The DVD has a decent featurette about the movie and the book and has the person the movie is based on.A good movie is lurking in this package- too bad the editor sabotaged the deal with leaving almost everything in(167 minutes). C+