Prince of the City

source: Prince of the City

Trailer—Prince of the City

Prince of the City

The best of the Lumet NY cop pictures. PRINCE OF THE CITY has an excellent script by Jay Presson Allen and a fine cast lead by Treat Williams and the best of NY's local actors. Danny Ciello, a NYC narcotics cop, deals with the conflict between his "moral compass" and the realities of drug law enforcement. The film is about Ciello clearing his conscience and suffering the consequences of seeing his police colleagues burned in the process. Supporting perfs are superb with special notice to Jerry Orbach as Ciello's partner and Lane Smith as the FBI agent that befriends Ciello's confused wife. Haunting score by Paul Chihara adds the finishing touch to this fine film about "doing the right thing" even when the consequences are so high. Hope this film is soon released on DVD for everyone to enjoy...

This is fine example of movie making and how shades of gray are everywhere. Highly recommended for intelligent viewers. Treat Williams has this role down Pat and for Law and Order fans probably the first time Jerry Orbach played a detective. This is a real life portrayal of the gritty big city drug trade and the interaction between cops, lawyers and DAs. and the way they all operate outside the law. The blue line is something the thinking man should be wary of.

I remember watching this many years ago, probably on TV, soon after it came out. It's always been on my mind and I watched it again over the last two evenings. I am just in awe of the powerful story, great acting and the gritty setting of this amazing film. To this day, I cannot believe Sidney Lumet never won an Oscar for best director for all the other great films of his: Twelve Angry Men, Serpico, Network, Dog Day Afternoon, and this masterpiece. With no special effects, no big name actors, no sex, Mr. Lumet has me glued to the screen for nearly three hours. I agree with the other reviewer that this is in the class of the great ones like the Godfather, On the Waterfront, Raging Bull, along with the French Connection, and Serpico. It's a shame that only a minuscule percentage of the IMDb population even has heard or seen films like these from this era, where films were truly an art form, rather than the commercial vehicle that they have become today.

Prince of the City is probably Sidney Lumet's best film to date. It is better then Serpico because it shows how dirty police corruption can get. Everyone is guilty in this film to some degree, there are no hero's. The viewer is taken inside the world of drug addicts and drug dealers, cops, lawyers and judges and is shown how easy it is for them to sell out and how sad it is when they do sell out. While "Prince of the City is a very long film and sometimes gets a little slowed down, it is a great story that is worth watching.

Danny Ciello (Treat Williams) is a narcotics officer in the Special Investigations Unit of the New York City Police Department. He buys information from his junkie informer with drugs. Gus Levy (Jerry Orbach) is his trusted partner. The unit uses numerous illegal tactics to get the convictions which crosses into self enrichment. They work almost unsupervised and are called Princes of the City. Danny often crosses the blurry boundary himself. The anti-corruption commission recruits him and he accepts after seeing the result of his informer's shattered life. He starts wearing a wire to collect evidence against his own unit. There is a lot to like about this from director Sidney Lumet. It's got the sense of the events and the people. It is too extended. The story kinda grinds me down which is similar to how it grinds Danny down. As for Treat Williams' performance, I mostly like it but sometimes he tries too hard. Overall, this is a good police corruption movie but it's too long.