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Genre: Crime | Drama
2 votes
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IMDB Review
Release: 14 March 1974
The story is based on the real life of a character named Serpico. It is a mesmerizing account of the uncontrolled corruption of the police academy in the city of New York. The movie begins by showing the viewers the total end of the movie where, Serpico (acted by Al Pacino) wilting at the rear of the running police car, totally confused and full of blood done by a wound from a gunshot that is fired by the police.
In the hospital he is seen to be alive and inside his mind we come to know through a flashback about his past. He just graduated from the police academy of New York, totally hale and hearty with lots of hopes and dreams about his coming future. Totally fresh and extremely eager to become something in life, Serpico is totally ready fro the first day of his actual performance, when he is paired with an aged and better-experienced police officer. But the first instance of problem appears very quickly when they go to a nearby coffee-shop and the owner gives them the food totally free of cost. This is because his sceptical partner tells him that they look in the other direction when the truck of the owner double-parks and the owner gives to them the food that he can spare. It is a very small amount of corruption but unfortunately Serpico is not very happy with the idea and does not find it acceptable.
After a certain number of years, we see that Serpico gives up his police uniform and remains in plain clothes because he plans to become a detective eventually in order to get the shield of gold. It is felt that he naturally has the ability to do this kind of job. He has a moustache, he looks messy and does not at all act as a real policeman. This kind of behavior shows its results but he eventually becomes somewhat isolated from all his co-workers because they find him a lot different from themselves. But Serpico is very happy with this change because he has many friends, many girlfriends and a comfortable flat to stay. The only thing that irritates him a lot is the corruption in the police department. It appears to him that even the ones in the detective department extract money from the crooks and do not do their work of punishing the ones that deserve to be punished. This builds a great amount of pressure on Serpico, which makes him more obstinate and run towards maintaining honesty. He is not at all ready to give up his good character and run towards the evil in order to earn some money.
But soon Serpico realize that his honest nature is stopping him from getting a promotion and thus affecting his career. It is preventing him from rising up. Thus Serpico tries to bring up this topic for some amount of discussion with the higher authority whose results can be easily predicted. He find out that even the people in power has gone through the same system to rise high to the position in which they are in now and therefore do not want to destroy the system and cause any kind of trouble in the department. They all want Serpico to keep this matter to himself. Thus out of frustration and depression at last he lands up in the hospital but the movie does not exactly reveal the reason of why he is there.
