Q & A

A detective in New York, Mike Brennan, kills a young Puerto Rican man and reports it as self defence. Al Reilly, newly arrived at the district attorney's office, is assigned to take the statements. The file will close on paper; everyone expects that. Reilly keeps asking, and what he meets is not one policeman but the prosecution service, the politics and the neighbourhood. Sidney Lumet writes and directs. Nick Nolte plays Brennan, Timothy Hutton plays Reilly, Patrick O'Neal plays the prosecutor Quinn. Lumet made films about police corruption repeatedly; Serpico and Prince of the City are from the same vein. This is the bleakest of them: the case does not resolve, nobody is punished, and the system repairs itself. The most uncomfortable thing is the language. The characters speak in racist and homophobic terms constantly and Lumet does not soften it; his purpose is to show what the daily language of the institution is. The choice was argued about at the time. Nolte's performance is the centre of it and counts among the most cited roles of his career. Who it is for: viewers who like Lumet's New York films and narratives of institutional corruption. Who it is not for: the language is genuinely harsh, the film offers no moral consolation anywhere, and the romantic subplot is weak.