the cop story the way it should be!!

You've have to understand where it is coming from!! Fed intravenously on Mr. Bachchan's movies, cop stories invoke a different kind of reaction in most indians. For the unlucky few like me, they give me a sense of "BEEN THERE DONE THAT". The image of Mr. Bachchan single handedly destroying mafioso while at the same time fighting corruption was exhilarating at its best,for some and well, escapist at its worst.He played his role to perfection,the ever-so-powerful Hindi Film hero with great gutso and enthralled an entire generation of a nation but I would be disappointed if he would admit that he ever believed really(i mean really really ) from the core of his heart in the optimism of the cop stories that he dished out or maybe he was just too blinded with the popularity and the adulation to really think that way.

Last Sunday i watched Sidney Lumet's Serpico and watching Pacino's seminal work as an incorruptible cop my entire idea about cop movies shifted into a different zone. Released around the same time when Big B was literally running amok among the audiences' minds and emotions with his angry young man/cop against the system act this movie takes you into a completely different world of its own, a world where cop movies should rightly belong: gritty, full of instances of desperate life-threatening measures taken,lives put on the line in the way that it should be( and by this i definitely don't mean dodging bullets).

The movie opens with Pacino being taken to an hospital as he is shot and then goes into flashback to tell the viewer how he reached this particular state. It tells the audience that he is the most dangerous cop alive and that's cause he doesn' t take money and not because he can kill goons by the dozen. I mean c'mon dudes and dudettes !!give the guys a break, beneath that uniform they are men like us!!

Serpico then takes us into the world of Frank Serpico who gets into the police line to do the right thing and then sees himself entangled into a system which is engulfed and deep-rooted into corruption from all sides. He embraces hippie counterculture, grows a beard and dresses like a road goon to look like one during his patrol sessions. You can smell the sincerity oozing from his performance as he succesfully convinces his superior on the futility of being a plain-clothed policeman wearing a shoe and socks combination which is a clear giveaway. He aspires to become a detective and hence joins a training course just to realize that he has wasted his time there as nothing fruitful is going to come out of it.

In the meanwhile, he is becoming increasingly frustrated with the corruption around him and wants to clean it up and takes help of his friend in the department to expose the racket,but ALAS!. He slowly realises that corruotion is an all pervasive evil but refuses to neither give up nor give in. Increasingly, he gets frustrated and decides to approach people outside the bureau(read : media) and antagonises a whole bunch of cops who are now gunning for his life.The cops decide to take matters into their own hands and in one of the drug racket-busting expeditions of theirs, leave him for the wolves. Serpico gets shot in the face and  survives but something more important within him dies and that is his belief to cleanup the system. The look on his face in the hospital says it all when he looks at the award of merit bestowed upon him.

We're then told he retires the following year and i believe, that is far away from the maddening world of corruption.

Lumet weaves a simple storyline with a stupendous performance from his leading man Al Pacino, as he  occupies most of the frames to the point of making everybody look like mere sidekicks. Pacino, on his part, makes it a delight to watch with a performance which matches up with some of his best ( and trust me there are many vying for that spot).

But for me the movie means a lot more, it reminds me of the old cop movies that i have grown up watching and makes my movie viewing experience poorer to say the least. I wonder if we lacked the ability to show cinema as a reflection of reality or we shied away from it because we were always bothered by a movie's box office prospects or maybe we were too psyched about the presence of an all-conquering hero in our movies. Whatever it was, Serpico is a brilliant cop classic, and it is as good as it gets.