Prince of the City sits between The Godfather and Goodfellas in both history and quality. You could do far worse when looking for a mobbed-up crime drama involving informants, but we’ve been spoiled by far better.
Here it’s director Sidney Lumet, as he did in 1973’s Serpico, adapting a true-life cop story, this time about a crooked New York City narcotics detective (Treat Williams) whose guilty conscience moves him to volunteer as an informant—on both criminals and other corrupt colleagues. “I wanted absolution,” Williams’ Danny Ciello says at one point, but that proves to be harder to achieve than he had anticipated.
Working with cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak, Lumet nods to The Godfather with the movie’s opening shot: of Danny in bed, the shadows so deep and rich that we feel the space of the room even though we can only make out his face in the faint light. He wakes with a start, believing he heard something, but it was likely only his troubled soul. “There’s nobody there,” assures his wife (Lindsay Crouse). But that’s of little comfort.
Prince of the City mostly feels like a competent procedural, but it occasional startles with images of similar artistry: Danny sitting in his car at night in the rain, a dim glow provided by the street lamp overhead and the junkie informant lighting up in the back seat; the silhouettes of Danny and a government attorney against a black iron fence and a blue night sky; a match cut from Danny’s narcotics buddies surrounding him in his backyard, as he has a breakdown, to them consoling him inside his house. It’s in such moments that Prince of the City flirts with greatness.
As Ciello, Williams has opportunities to be great, but he doesn’t quite rise to the occasion. He’s solid throughout, but never more than that—even in the scenes seemingly designed to place him on the same playing field as the likes of Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Ray Liotta. Early on, still torn about committing to being an informant, Danny unleashes a tirade about the brokenness of the justice system and the helplessness cops on the front line can feel. Later, he tells a long story about a mob deal he helped broker, even adopting the voices of the characters involved. In both instances, Williams’ performance, while strong, never reaches that final gear—the one that makes you believe that what you’re seeing is taking place on the inside.
Danny’s journey is a long one, over many years and many court cases, and as Prince of the City dutifully traces these developments it begins to trudge, even as Danny’s psychological state becomes increasingly fraught. Lumet builds to an extensive parallel sequence in which he cuts between Danny on the stand during a retrial, after being accused of committing perjury, and a dozen or so high-level government lawyers debating with their boss whether the feds should stick by Danny or cut him loose. As the dialogue drags on, the movie begins to resemble Lumet’s first film, 12 Angry Men, even as those shadows in the lawyer’s office deepen beyond anything The Godfather managed, eventually moving from clever to cliche.
(10/9/2024)
