Instead, the emphasis is overwhelmingly on Al Pacino as Frank Serpico, as a slightly peculiar (at least by NYPD standards), straight-up but not particularly stuffy or saintly regular guy. Serpico never becomes electric, as French Connection does it is not much interested in chase scenes or violent setpieces. Today, Lumet’s non-hyperbolic, procedural tenor and attention to location-shot detail (though oddly the film does nothing to convey the great cultural/fashion changes of its 1960-71 timespan) is both a great strength and a limitation. But the latter was usually at his best in such urban-crime thematic territory, and his unfussy, docudrama-ish style befit a production that had to be shot fast to accommodate the star’s imminent Godfather II schedule, as well as a planned Christmas release. Avildsen (of Joe and later Rocky), replacing him with Sidney Lumet. The real Serpico didn’t like the film version of his story, because it departed from facts and because producer Dino De Laurentiis fired original director John G.
But the reforms his testimony (as well as that of a few other, lesser-sung cops) forced into being had considerable long-term impact on police conduct, in NYC and beyond. All that made him famous, if hardly popular among colleagues he “retired” and spent the rest of the decade keeping a low profile in Europe. But there really was a Frank Serpico, a plainclothes officer who really had blown the whistle on widespread NYPD corruption in the 1960s, and lived (albeit barely-he was shot in a 1971 drug raid that may have been set up to silence him) to tell the tale, in a book written by journalist Peter Maas.
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