Institutionalized Ambivalence

Prince of the City poses fascinating artistic and moral questions, even ifitisa film that leaves you ultimately dissatisfied. Out of its 167 minutes’ running time, I got about forty of genuine absorption, ninety of mounting exasperation shot through with sporadic jolts of involvement, and 37 of wishing it were over and done with. Twenty to 30 per cent of the dialogue I either could not make out or could not fathom, what with mush-mouthed or machine-gun delivery, or outlandish events that escaped me or made no sense to me, so that I dearly wished for a freeze frame, instant replay, or subtitles.

Yet Prince of the City is well worth seeing because there is so much—too much—for the eyes, ears, and mind to sop up, to be tantalized but not (until toward the end) bored by, and to walk away from wrapped in speculation. Based on Robert Daley’s book about Robert Leuci, a detective in the Special Investigative Unit (SIU) of the Narcotics Division who turned star witness for the Knapp Commission, the screenplay by Jay Presson Allen and the director, Sidney Lumet, focuses on Danny Ciello (the Leuci character), but takes in, in ever-widening circles, scores of characters on either side of the law – and often on both sides at once—as the investigation of police corruption proceeds. Ciello, wired for sound, becomes a human tape recorder moving—at great peril and sometimes within inches of being murdered—through a miasma of crooked cops, crooked lawyers, police spies, double agents, pushers, and mobsters of every denomination, and bringing back the jungle on tape.

JS

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John Simon

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Prince of the City poses fascinating artistic and moral questions, even ifitisa film that leaves you ultimately dissatisfied. Out of its 167 minutes’ running time, I got about forty of genuine absorption, ninety of mounting exasperation shot through with sporadic jolts of involvement, and 37 of wishing it were over and done with. Twenty to 30 per cent of the dialogue I either could not make out or could not fathom, what with mush-mouthed or machine-gun delivery, or outlandish events that escaped me or made no sense to me, so that I dearly wished for a freeze frame, instant replay, or subtitles.

Yet Prince of the City is well worth seeing because there is so much—too much—for the eyes, ears, and mind to sop up, to be tantalized but not (until toward the end) bored by, and to walk away from wrapped in speculation. Based on Robert Daley’s book about Robert Leuci, a detective in the Special Investigative Unit (SIU) of the Narcotics Division who turned star witness for the Knapp Commission, the screenplay by Jay Presson Allen and the director, Sidney Lumet, focuses on Danny Ciello (the Leuci character), but takes in, in ever-widening circles, scores of characters on either side of the law – and often on both sides at once—as the investigation of police corruption proceeds. Ciello, wired for sound, becomes a human tape recorder moving—at great peril and sometimes within inches of being murdered—through a miasma of crooked cops, crooked lawyers, police spies, double agents, pushers, and mobsters of every denomination, and bringing back the jungle on tape.