Updated RankingsThe Hill (1965)
★ ★ ★ - OkayI’d like to know when Lumet moved away from carefully planned camerawork towards a more docudrama grit. I like the grit, but I’ve hardly scratched the surface of films blocked and shot like 12 Angry Men. The cinematography of The Hill is superb, greatly enhancing the fine acting instead of just preserving it. As good as the film is, it’s also yet another story of extreme brutality and psychological torture in a prison, one of the most worn out and overused ideas for a film ever.
The Offence (1973)
★ ★ ★ – GoodFrom a simple premise comes a strange film. Sean Connery plays a detective looking for a child molester. Questioning a suspect, things go terribly wrong when the detective has a mental breakdown. Lumet fractures the narrative beginning with the end of the interrogation and circling back to it several times. There’s a very outdated scene in the middle where we’re meant to feel sorry for Connery while he’s verbally berating his wife - She’s so sympathetic. Blech! – but the investigation into the incident and the climactic full interrogation showcase Lumet’s ability to take a play and make it cinematic while also reaping the benefits of the script’s theatricality. A style of direction very much like what Lumet does later with Equus (1977), which is just as good a film.
Serpico (1973)
★ ★ ★ – Very GoodThere’s an odd structure to Serpico, often jumping weeks or months ahead with only Al Pacino’s facial hair and wardrobe to clue you in. I’d say the script is only telling the dramatic highlights, but there’s plenty of down time, especially in the first half. (Do we really need to get to know so much about Serpico’s relationship with the girlfriend who leaves him well before things get intense?)
In the end, the lack of connective tissue hardly matters because Lumet and Pacino are complimenting each other like Scorsese and De Niro. The film captures 70s New York and whips it into atmosphere as dangerous as the slums in City of God. Pacino appears to be given a lot of room to fail big, but his method style is bottled by Lumet into an over-carbonated drink ready to explode. The supporting cast is an endless parade of vaguely familiar faces, and it’s kind of novel to see a cop trying to stay clean against an overwhelmingly corrupt system. I’m surprised the film’s reputation seems to have cooled so much