Serpico Movie Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Serpico - Movie Review Example After this movie, I entrenched the actor, Al Pacino, as occupying the third leg of my great acting triumvirate, already filled up by Dustin Hoffman and Robert de Niro. Al Pacino convincingly moved viewers all over the world by portraying a crusading cop, disgusted with the endemic corruption among his colleagues. We watched with trepidation as he single-handedly exhausted all means to weed out the corruption that also tried, albeit, unsuccessful, to siphon him inside, like a maelstrom, to its putrid miasma. We commiserated with him as his frustrations sabotaged his relationships with his girlfriends and his best friend, leaving him alone to fight his battle and leaving him only with his martyrdom to cling to. We were riveted with anxiety as his life became an easy target by fellow rotten cops who were aggrieved by the presence of a traitor in their midst, a self-righteous crusader out to wrest their sources of easy money. We watched with horror as he was from all the looks of it, tra pped to be executed, getting a bullet right in the cheek. We sighed for the loss of a good man in the service, as he threw in the towel by leaving the police force and eventually immigrating to Switzerland. All the idealistic men and women with an all-consuming integrity should make Serpico's battle and inner torments as their own personal battle and turmoil. This movie should have been retitled as "The Police Beat: No Place For An Idealistic Man". The Issue of Police Corruption as Tackled In This Movie The movie is basically about systemic, institutionalized police corruption in New York City and about how one honest, virtuous cop with a high sense of morals and values refuses to go with the flow and adhere to his own honorable code of conduct as police officer and in return got despised by his own colleagues and got brutalized which almost cost him his life. He has always crowed that he is meant to be a policeman. He thus entered the service first as a greenhorn police on patrol. No sooner has he started his service as he first encountered corruption in the form a free meal in one restaurant. He ordered for a particular food but was instead given something else. His colleague companion admonished him "You have to take what Charlie gives. It is for free." Charlie, the owner, intently eyed the new policeman as if saying, "You're now one of my employees. It is your responsibility to protect this place and in return your