There’s an overwhelming weight to Serpico, Sidney Lumet’s early 1970's cop masterpiece. The weight of corruption, of that cold stare you get when someone doesn’t like you and wants you to know it, and of trying to do what’s right when besieged by a division cracking with moral decay. Pacino’s Frank Serpico is very much trapped in the grimy, realistic world that Lumet has set out before him, the New York City police department. He’s an honest "plain clothes" cop (he has the best wardrobe in movie history), one that doesn’t take money and actually tries to lock up the bad guys... and on numerous occasions he makes it known that all he wants is "to do my job." But he’s surrounded by cops on the take, who release criminals and skim money as if it’s a benefit of the job and distrust a police officer that dares not to. Meanwhile everyone he turns to for help seems pathetically impotent or flat-out uninterested. The subjucated performance that Pacino gives here is on par with his best ever (yes, it’s Godfather good). He’s a bundle of fraying nerves, often spilling over into his personal life and keeps him detached, from women, from anyone. The further invested he gets into exposing the corruption, the more eyes that seem to be watching him, the less anything seems to change. Or as Pacino puts it, "The laundry just keeps getting dirtier."
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