Night Falls on Manhattan

Sean Casey is new at the district attorney's office. His father and brother are policemen. A large drugs case comes up: officers were shot in a raid and a suspect was caught. Sean takes the case and wins it, and that success carries him quickly to the district attorney's chair. Then the defence lawyer makes a claim: information had leaked before the raid and some officers were taking money from that gang. At the centre of the claim is his father's unit. Sidney Lumet writes and directs. Andy Garcia plays Sean, Ian Holm his father and Richard Dreyfuss the lawyer; James Gandolfini is in the cast. The source is Robert Daley's book. Lumet made several films about police corruption in New York over his career and this is a late example of that line. What the narrative builds is neither pure good nor pure evil; the film keeps its characters in a grey area and clears nobody entirely. The courtroom and office scenes are worked in detail; procedure is inside the narrative. Andy Garcia's character keeps changing position and in the end has to set his own moral limit. The ending offers no clear victory and the narrative does not present compromise as a resolution. Its limit is pace; some sections are loaded with explanation and the narrative slows. Who it is for: viewers who like Lumet's New York films and legal drama. Who it is not for: it rests on talk, there is little action, and there are many characters.